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Our Program

Each family invited to participate in the program moves into a completely furnished home where they may live for one to two years. (Most complete the program in one.) The furnishings in their homes are theirs to take with them when they move to provide a sense of continuity in the transition.

Upon entry into the Rainbow Village program, families are assessed in terms of financial status and available resources, career development, education attainment, life skills, available support systems, and mental/physical health, all of which are used to establish a baseline from which to create a realistic plan for achieving self-sufficiency. The end-goal is the same for all families – the ability to lead healthy and sustainable lifestyles on their own – but the individual paths are different. Staff members meet regularly with heads of household to discuss their progress, address program compliance issues and to overcome obstacles.

School-aged children attend a mandatory After-School Program, in which professional tutoring, preparation for standardized tests, and enrichment activities in support of academic remediation and achievement are provided on a daily basis. During the summer the children attend summer camp. In addition, while their parents attend life-skills classes in the evenings, the children and youth engage in scheduled recreational activities and/or classes focused on character-building and age-appropriate life-skills.

All classes are facilitated by staff or volunteers with expertise in the scheduled topic areas, e.g. banking representatives, counselors, credit counselors, staffing and recruiting professionals. Meals are provided and served on the evenings classes are held by local community groups, volunteer organizations, civic clubs and/or local businesses.

Who We Serve

Women and children comprise 58% of the homeless population and the average age of a homeless person in our community is 9 years old. These are not the faces we typically picture when we think of homeless people on the streets. They are the hidden homeless.

While bad habits, choices, and life circumstances of adults can result in homelessness, more often than not there are cycles and forces working against them that are truly beyond their control that cause their homelessness.

Families are most often homeless due to one or more of the following causes:

• domestic violence
• family break-up
• unemployment
• medical problems
• perpetuating cycles of domestic violence and/or poverty

The majority of families who come to Rainbow Village are headed by single mothers who lack the stability, skills and opportunity to compete successfully in the workplace because of the trauma they’ve suffered. Upon acceptance into our program families make a commitment to work hard, do what it takes, and make the necessary changes to create a new way of life for their families.

Rainbow Village accepts homeless families with children of north metro Atlanta meeting all eligibility criteria. Acceptance into our program is not restricted by gender, marital status or the nature of child guardianship.

Click here to learn more about the myths and realities of homelessness in our community.

If your family is in crisis and you wish to explore whether you are eligible for our program, contact us.

Breaking the Cycles

When confronted with prolonged and/or repeated episodes of homelessness, domestic violence and/or abandonment, adults lose (or are unable to acquire) a sense of safety and confidence in their ability to provide it for themselves, and they are consequently unable to transmit that sense of safety and self-esteem or support the acquisition of life-skills by their children. This initiates and sustains a cycle which seldom can be exited without assistance from outside.

At its core, the Rainbow Village program for adults is an educational intervention focused on the transfer of knowledge required for the acquisition of financial and emotional self-sufficiency. But if we are to truly break the cycles of homelessness, poverty and domestic violence we have to model good habits and critical life-skills to the children too. Children must be taught to live self-sufficient lives. Ideally, their parents teach them how, but sometimes our residents can’t teach what they don’t know or don’t have the ability to model. Working together with both the adults and the children, we give them skills for a lifetime that they will pass down for generations to come.

Measuring Our Success

One hundred percent of the residents work 30+ hours per week averaging a minimum of $8.00 per hour (up to $12 per hour) and contribute 20-30% of income toward rent and savings. Program participants also work toward educational milestones with 40% of the residents receiving GED assistance or working towards other certification needed for career advancement, job security and increased earning potential. Children generally arrive functioning at one to two grade levels below capability. Within six to nine months of entering the program, these children are back up to their appropriate grade level.

The intended outcomes for the Rainbow Village program and facilities relate to three general areas:

• Provision of a stable and supportive environment and routine for resident families.
• Financial stability and empowerment and life-skills development for adults and children and youth.
• Academic improvement and psychosocial skill development in children and youth in the program.

We use the following objectives to benchmark and evaluate the effectiveness of our programs overall:

• Families will be able to acquire and maintain housing on their own without government assistance.
• The children and youth of homeless families will be exposed to more adaptive models of behavior and break the cycles of homelessness, poverty and/or domestic violence from which they came.
• Families will increase their quality of life and leave with an educational and psychosocial foundation on which they can continue to build.
• Rainbow Village will become a model transitional housing and support services program for other organizations to emulate throughout the state, region, and nation, offering consultative services and serving a more public role in advocating for changes in policy and long range planning.

Rainbow Village has the capacity to serve ten homeless families at a time with our current facilities. This translates to enabling 28 to 35 individuals to achieve self-sufficiency annually.

The viability of Rainbow Village’s efforts in breaking the cycles of homelessness, poverty and domestic violence is statistically documented in the 85% success rate of families who remain self-sustaining three to four years after graduating from the program. Since 1991, over 500 individuals have transitioned into the mainstream as a result of Rainbow Village. Two former Rainbow Village graduates are now on staff as program directors serving as living examples of what is achievable.

To read success stories from our residents first-hand, click here.