What does the Rainbow Project do?

Established in 1999 by a group of parents and childcare professionals as a non-profit organization in Hong Kong, the Rainbow Project aims to:

• Provide special educational facilities for children with autism
• Promote awareness of autism in the Hong Kong community
  
  

The Rainbow Project is developing a programme of education for ASD children drawing on the experience, practice and research emanating from the leading centres of excellence in USA and Europe. The Rainbow Project intends to transplant these skills into Hong Kong and thereby establish a centre of excellence providing appropriate education for ASD children which can be used as a template for the establishment of more facilities in Hong Kong to meet the needs of such children.

The first classroom was established at the Hong Kong Academy Primary School in 2000.  The second classroom, at Sunshine Preparatory School (SPS) opened officially in January 2006 and due to the closure of SPS in June 2007, Rainbow has now established an ‘Early Intervention Classroom’, providing services for children between the ages of 3 to 6, which opened in September 2007. Both cater for the needs of children with ASD coming FROM multinational English speaking family backgrounds.  Both classrooms are managed by Melissa Moss who previously worked for two years as a classroom teacher for Rainbow.  She has now taken on the role of Programme Coordinator, working with two senior Special Education classroom teachers, and a team of highly experienced classroom assistants who are all specifically trained in ASD teaching techniques, as well as a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) and an Occupational Therapist (OT) both with many years of experience running the SLT and OT programmes at Rainbow .

The long term aim of Rainbow has been to establish a resource which other classrooms and facilities can draw on and "feed" off. The concept of a 'transfer of skills and expertise' FROM overseas through the conduit of the pilot scheme for the benefit of all ASD children in Hong Kong is at the heart of the Rainbow Project.

The Rainbow Project Company Limited is a company limited by guarantee and has been incorporated in Hong Kong. The company was granted charitable status by the Inland Revenue Department on 17th September 1999 and is the entity through which the charitable purposes and objectives of the Rainbow Project will be conducted.

The Rainbow Project intends to become an additional resource for all concerned with the education of Autistic children. In this respect, the Rainbow Project aims to establish ties with any similar groups within the SAR and has already made moves in this direction, joining forces with the Growing Together GROUP of Charities.

It is also the aim of the Rainbow Project to assert and promote the rights of all children with ASD within the community.

In summary, the Rainbow Project intends to benefit:

• The children enrolled in its programmes
• Parents, care givers, and educators of children diagnosed with Autism and related disorders.
• The education system in Hong Kong as a whole by introducing educational resources and experience FROM outside Hong Kong which hitherto have not been applied in an ASD specific classroom environment.
• The community in general by highlighting issues in respect of the Autistic child.

Help us spread the good news — there is hope out there.

You and the Rainbow Project - together we can be the promise of a better future for children with Autism

The Rainbow Project donation form is available for download.