IDEAS is an NGO founded in 1986 involved with integrated community development including sustainable agriculture, cooperative development/community organising, enterprise development, waste management and alternative education. It has programs in three provinces: Oriental Mindoro, Palawan and Cavite. In Mindoro, IDEAS is supporting two alternative schools that it helped establish with church lay leaders and clergy to provide relevant and quality education especially for the poor, these are the Pax Christi Learning Institute (PCLI), which was established in 2000 and the Family Farm School (FFS), which was established in 2001.

PCLI has pre-school and grade school levels while the Family Farm School is a secondary school. IDEAS assist in whatever means to make these schools sustainable and thereby make a positive difference in the rural communities. These schools are not of the traditional type especially the secondary school because students are taught both at home and in school. Hence they have school period wherein they stay in school for 2 weeks attending to regular classes and other co-curricular activities not in the traditional schools. They also have one week as farm period wherein they stay at their own farms. This is the alternating 3-week cycle and we have 14 cycles of this alternating cycle within a school year. A community development component is being implemented simultaneous with the academic training, involving the family which aims at contributing to poverty alleviation. Funds coming from small local donations and funding agencies were used to build the school building which is also a training center. Generally, the programs are sustained through a highly committed work force who subsists on volunteer salaries.