Association for Rural and Urban Needy
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Mission Statement
Rainbow Homes Program by ARUN (Association for Rural and Urban Needy provides non-custodial, residential, comprehensive, Long-term care for children and youth. The children age group catered is 6-18 and youth in the age group of 18-25; who are on the street or off the street, in need to sustainable and quality life.
About This Cause
Rainbow Homes Program - (Conducted by Association for Rural and Urban Needy [ARUN]) ARUN: Association for Rural and Urban Needy (ARUN) works with marginalized communities in urban and rural areas particularly with Dalits, Safai Karamcharis, Children without Adult Care and Distressed Communities that are victims of homelessness. ARUN acts as the coordinating agency between Rainbow Homes Program and our 24 partners spread across 8 cities, who implement the Rainbow Homes for Girls and Sneh Ghars for boys. It is also an implementing agency ensuring that the day-to-day management of the Rainbow Homes & Sneh Ghars, its rules and policies adhere to the larger principles and specifications of the Rainbow Homes model across the country. Objective The Rainbow Homes program intends to create 'social value' by improving the living conditions and future opportunities of street girls in India. 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’. Background: Children on the streets are brave but profoundly vulnerable survivors. They have run away from incest, violent and substance-abusing guardians, starvation, cruel step-parents, and even horrendous massacres. They have seen death and have survived. If they did not have confidence in themselves they could not have done what they have done, and the new adults in their lives must not undermine that self-confidence, but rather nurture it into maturity and emotional stability. Children living on the street have been forced to live by their wits on the street, find food, work or beg to get money, fight for whatever they need, fend off older bullies and all the time carry a well of emptiness in themselves because the significant adults in their lives have failed them. They are extremely resilient and some of them bounce back even after severe maltreatment. They live in the present moment and get what joy they can, when they can. Their backgrounds and experiences are colourful and the name ‘Rainbow Children’ suits them well. You can also never hold a rainbow in the palm of your hand. Children from the street are free spirits. They do not take kindly to being locked inside a gate, being supervised closely, and being corrected constantly. Therefore, they need intelligent and understanding guidance from adults that comes only with love. They prove to be able to learn and accept discipline when this is not accompanied by condemnation or rejection. They seem to have created a space around themselves, which served the purpose of self-protection when they were living on the street. They do not easily allow others to come into this shell. The children often carry scars of earlier negative experiences of which they do not speak until they trust people around them. They sometimes show a strange combination of the maturity of adults coupled with the joy, vulnerability and innocence of a child. In general, street children suffer from many denials and vulnerabilities: these include deprivation of responsible adult protection; coercion to work to eat each day; work in unhealthy occupations on streets like rag-picking, begging and sex work; abysmally poor sanitary conditions; inadequate nutrition from begging, foraging and food stalls; a range of psycho-social stresses; physical abuse and sexual exploitation; and exposure to hard drug abuse. A distinction is sometimes made about two kids of street children: children on the streets and children of the streets. Children of the street are even more vulnerable than children on the streets because they have no adult protection whatsoever. They either have no parents or have escaped on the streets abusive, violent, alcoholic or irresponsible parents. They can be mainstreamed for formal education in schools; but they have no home to go back to, only the streets. They therefore need comprehensive long term residential care for the entire duration of their childhood and youth, but in ways that are voluntary and non-custodial. As distinct from children of the street, children on the street do retain live contact with their families in the city, who may live on the streets or in slums. However, because of extreme poverty, substance abuse or irresponsible parentage, the children are left largely to their own devices. At an early age, they often learn to beg, at places of worship or traffic lights, or they forage in rubbish heaps not only for food but also for various materials that can be sold for recycling. As they grow older, girls are often drawn into casual street-based sex work, whereas boys may diversify from rag picking to working in garages and catering establishments, and sometimes petty crime. Both kinds of children require comprehensive residential care. Residential care is imperative for children of the street because it is futile to believe that they can ever pursue and education without assured safety and protection. But for many children on the streets as well, it is unrealistic to expect that they will be able to pursue mainstream education except in a residential setting. But if some of these children return to their loving but highly impoverished families at night, they would still need to be day-boarders in the residential school, to be able to enter formal education. Over time, most street children can be persuaded to go to mainstream schools, after a bridge education. Each of the children in our Rainbow Homes was formerly homeless and was living on the streets. Many are orphans or children of single homeless parents, and nearly all have faced varying degrees of abuse, violence and threats that are unimaginable in severity for most of us from the economically stronger sections of society. The children land up on the streets either because they are lost and cannot find their way back home, or they have run away from terribly abusive households. Some are even born on the streets, never knowing what a home or stable roof feels like. Each one comes in the home malnourished and suffering from systemic diseases. Very few have ever had any exposure to formal education, having survived instead by engaging in casual labour. History of the Rainbow Homes Program Deeply impacted by the plucky spirit of the pint-sized and grimy homeless girls on a visit to India, Ferd van Koolwijk, a Dutch businessman, initiated the Rainbow Home Program in February 2002, believing there had to be a simple way to address the problem of street children and provide a basic cost-effective and replicable solution. After a fact-finding mission to India in August 2001, during which he had in-depth discussions with experts from different backgrounds as well as with many street children themselves. On his next visit to India, Ferd met with the former Governor of West Bengal, Sri Viren Shah, who helped him to identify a partner organization with an excellent reputation. And Ferd was introduced to Sister M. Cyril Mooney, 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 reintegration of street children in India. Loreto Day School is a great example of how a school can be developed into a centre for social innovation. The first Rainbow Home opened its doors in this school in 2002, an example that was followed by the other Loreto schools in Kolkata. After the success of the program in New Delhi and Kolkata, the model was formalised and replicated across other. Rainbow Homes Program We provide comprehensive care to every child in our home through education, nutrition, health care and protection, thus ensure the overall development of children for a transformed life with dignity. -Education On arrival to the home, every single child is provided with Residential Special Training Course (RSTC) to the mainstream in the formal education, in association with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, where the condensed &age-appropriate syllabus is taught and after continuous assessment process, children are inducted to school education. The program model of Rainbow Home assures that the children are housed within the school campus, thus, our children in Rainbow homes are residing at Chennai Corporations’ Middle School premises with all necessary infrastructure, including washrooms and indoor/outdoor recreation facilities. -Nutrition All the children under our care in Rainbow Homes are provided with a balanced and nutritious diet (hot cooked meals thrice a day and snacks with health drink in the evening to ensure supplementary nutrition for the residents. We do accept individuals/associations that are willing to provide food to our children but with restrictions, including denial of cooked food in any context. -Healthcare Children in the Rainbow Home, Rainbow Homes are provided with proper health care which starts at the time of admission. In a week’s time, the new entrant to the home is taken for a whole-body health check and follow up treatment supports are provided. At a regular interval, medical check-ups are conducted and children are sensitized on health issues, personal hygiene and other environmental awareness. -Protection Safe, happy and clean spaces are given in a loving and child-friendly environment. Every member of the staff has read, understood and signed the ‘child protection policy’. The compound is guarded by fulltime security personnel and the common areas, including the main entrance of the building, are under CCTV surveillance, to ensure safety and security of the inmates. -Futures We ensure a smooth transition of our children from home care social integration by providing life and livelihood skills through post-secondary education, vocational education, integrated employment and independent living.