The Agape Rural (Health) Program (ARP)is a community based development program that was developed to help needy and underserved Filipinos improve their quality of life through holistic health services anchored on the socioeconomic and spiritual upliftment.
Since its beginnings in 1986, hundreds of volunteers (doctors, nurses, dentists, physical therapists, psychologist and other professionals) have been recruited and trained. Their training consists of one-month didactic on Holistic Community Health Development. They are then sent out for 2-4 months to selected communities for field work. Here they discover how to live out the principles they were taught. Within the four months stay in the community, they are to recruit and train local volunteers for health care delivery and social multiplication and these will continue the work after the ARP volunteers have completed their assignment and subsequently exit from the area.
The Agape Rural Program (ARP) started with seven volunteer doctors assigned in the provinces of Palawan and Leyte who brought health care services and facilities to its rural municipalities. The program fields professional medical volunteers to needy communities to minister to the people by providing health care and spiritual nourishment. Since its launching 25 years ago, ARP has grown into a vibrant medical program of professionals from the medical field as well as in the different fields of expertise, serving the provinces of Palawan, Cagayan, Nueva Ecija, Aurora, Mindanao and Leyte-Samar. It continues to hold medical and dental missions as well as short-term medical missions with non-government organizations in East Asia and other unreached areas. It has also branched out to conducting nutritional programs, vegetable and herbal gardening, Community-based Malaria control programs, construction of sanitary toilets, and potable water systems.
ARP indeed is a fulfillment of a vision. Students and professionals develop a burden for the underprivileged by joining full time community work and short term opportunities. One essential factor in the success of the ARP program is the development of local indigenous health volunteers and leaders who become both their partners and co-laborers in the great task of the Philippines’ rural and community development.
