From a university evening class to the roadside settlements

In 2007 the campus of MJP Rohilkhand University in Bareilly was full of construction sites, and the labourers building them had come with their families from other states. Their children spent the whole day idle on the site. A few engineering students, working with the Foundation, started a two-hour evening school for them at the Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, and named it Indradhanush, the rainbow.

The class began with 16 children and grew to about 150. In 2010 a Bareilly newspaper reported on it under the headline "B.Tech students build a unique school for poor children". In 2010 the Foundation took on the full school costs of eight children in great need — fees, books and uniforms — for the first time.

In 2014 our founder began visiting the Gadhiya Lohar families living in tents along Bareilly's roads. The first thing the Foundation did was share their winters: warm clothes for the children, and quilts, mattresses and blankets for whole settlements, with medical camps alongside. In December 2014, families gathered at the IMA building in Bareilly to receive quilts. Then the Foundation appointed teachers and started evening schools in three settlements. Within a year, 53 children had been admitted to schools in the city, with their fees, books, clothes and fares paid by the Foundation's volunteers and supporters.

That is the Indradhanush that continues today, with more than 150 children in school.