You Can Help Hundreds Of Underprivileged Children Get An Education

It intends to create 'social value' by improving the living conditions and future opportunities of street children in India, one of the most destitute classes in the world. A rights-based approach is followed to achieve this: every child has rights to a safe home, food, development, education, care, and affection essentially what is clubbed as ‘comprehensive care’. The Rainbow Homes program offers all of these aspects and has achieved remarkable results over the 12 years of its existence. Its objectives are:

-More and more children to be covered under the rights-based care across the country.

-Ensuring advancement of the residential, non-custodial, comprehensive, long term care approach.

-Ensuring greater primary responsibility of the govt. at the central, state and local level for all vulnerable children.

-Ensuring child-centric, transparent, sustainable organization structures

Salient features of the program are:

-Uniform and high standards of care.

-Shared learning via best practice sharing and capacity-building programs.

-Partnership with government, local NGOs, and civil society.

-Program management and monitoring of standards by the professional team through State project coordination and national offices.

Genesis of the Rainbow Home Program:

The Rainbow Home Program was initiated by Sister Cyril Mooney, Former head of the Loreto Day School in Kolkata, Padma Shri awardee and recipient of a number of prestigious Indian and international awards, for organizing shelter, education and re-integration of street children in India. Sister Cyril in Calcutta got street girls off the street into a safe environment to provide education and comprehensive care for them. 

This residential place for street children within the school compound that assured them safety and security, food, education, health and nutrition, and love and care was called “Rainbow Homes”. In 2002, Mr. Ferd Van Koolwijk, a Dutch businessman with a vision to reach out to many street children together with sister Cyril facilitated in establishment of more Rainbow Homes. In 2007, with the support and guidance of Harsh Mander, a former IAS, now social worker and writer, was a member of the National Advisory Council and special commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case and Director of Centre for Equity Studies, scaled the Rainbow Home Program outside Kolkata by partnering with the Government in other cities. 

With the belief that all aspects of these children’s life should be taken care of for their mainstreaming in society, Rainbow Home's comprehensive care model pays equal attention to protection, education, healthcare, nutrition, entitlement, and career-related aspects of children.

National Presence

The Rainbow Homes Program currently runs 54 homes in the country for boys and girls that formerly lived and survived on the streets of our urban cities. These homes are located in New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Ananthapur, Ranchi, and Patna; and collectively house nearly 4,000 children. Each home is run in cooperation with the State Government (including partial funding) and operates under the Right to Education Act, or Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, under the Department of Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development.  The Rainbow Homes program for girls and Sneh Ghars for boys is a ‘non-custodial, residential comprehensive care’ program to enable the mainstreaming of children formerly on the streets, thereby pulling them away from a life of crime and victimization. A basic degree of safety, nutrition, and skill development leads to employable and productive youth.

The table below represents the growth of rainbow homes year on year and the number of children. As of date rainbow homes have reached 4,280 children in 54 homes over 9 cities. Since our inception we have been able to impact over ten thousand lives on streets of urban India.

About NGO

Rainbow Homes Program as an umbrella project of RFI (Rainbow Foundation India) works in collaboration with ARUN (Association for Rural & Urban Needy), government and other like minded organizations aiming to protect, care for, educate and empower our most disadvantaged children. These include children who live on city streets; orphaned, abandoned, and violence-affected children; working children; children of farmer – suicide and starvation families and children of s*x workers. We strive to ensure that these children access their rights in loving, open and safe residential care homes in government buildings for them to grow into happy, responsible and caring citizens.