Community work is central to the Philippine Program.  It entails the establishment of pilot sites where Tebtebba work with partners to elaborate and operationalize the integrated and holistic approach for sustainable, self-determined development. Tebtebba facilitates community research and planning towards formulating their comprehensive and strategic plans,  and focuses its support to strengthening customary governance, promoting and developing indigenous knowledge, systems, practices, and innovations to protect, conserve, restore and enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services, contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and set up and/or strengthen community enterprise.

Working with communities has helped Tebtebba increase its sensitivities to working within customary processes and protocols and also facilitate needed improvement to cope with rapid modernization. These include abiding with customary free prior and informed consent, clarifying partnership agreements, facilitating the crafting of policies and guidelines in projects development (e.g. finance policies, care and management of tools and equipment, others), ensuring the formulation of agreements where they are needed (e.g. use of lands in projects, others).

Successful projects include but are not limited to strengthening indigenous protection and management of natural resources; forest restoration, protection and preservation of watersheds to help sustain the volume and flow of water; revitalization and innovations of good practices in agriculture for increased productivity, and retrieval of traditional food crops and varieties. Other projects focus on strengthening indigenous political structures to resolve issues and problems, to implement their self-determined development plans, and to advance indigenous education through formal and non-formal means, among others.