The ‘Family Farm’ vision is OnePlate’s biggest project to date.
The Family Farm is a 10-acre fully sustainable innovative farm which is currently being built just outside of Manila in the Philippines spearheaded by Will Marcus in partnership with a Filipino foundation and Donald Van Cooten from Breaking the Hunger Cycle.
After it has been established it will be run by 50 street families from Manila. These families will be given the land, tools, equipment, seeds, education and housing to slowly build a safe life away from the streets.
The Family Farm is a work in progress. In August 2017, OnePlate sourced the funding for a farmhouse to be built on site to house the volunteers establishing the farm.
Through the generosity of our supporters and partner eateries, OnePlate was able to raise a further $20,000 to plant 2,000 one-meter high grafted fruit and nut trees. The volunteers are now working on establishing a greenhouse and aqua fishing.
Time and again, street families tell how they have moved to the cities for a chance of a better life. However, when they get there, they are embroiled in a cycle of poverty, homelessness, drugs, violence and prostitution. One of the keys to breaking this cycle is to get the families off the streets. However, many of them don’t have the skills or education to lift themselves from the poverty cycle.
The Family Farm will give them these tools. The 50 resident families will be taught how to run and maintain the fully working farm, giving them the skills necessary to maintain a life away from the streets.
To complete this project, OnePlate has partnered with a Filipino foundation who are the owners of the entire farm project. Each week this foundation feeds and clothes over 500 street children at their site in Manila. However, the foundation’s food is currently entirely dependent on the generosity of donors. In time, food grown at the Family Farm will be used to provide a stable source for the children still on the streets. Eventually, children connected to the foundation might choose to come and work on the farm.
The Family Farm will not only teach the street families how to grow their own food, but it will also create opportunities for them to build their own food enterprises.
The Family Farm will include a counselling centre and restaurant on site. It will be the beginning of a new life.
Projects like the Family Farm are exactly why OnePlate was created. It offers holistic, long term and sustainable ways of keeping the next generation off the streets.
The Family Farm would not be possible without the generous support from our donors.
In this way, the Family Farm is a growing testament to our philosophy that tiny encounters, and small moments of generosity can create an enormous impact.
If the Family Farm is a success, we plan to replicate it across the Philippines.
