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Coloring Their World With Caring:
The Fort Bend Rainbow Room Provides Emergency Supplies To Those In Need
In Fort Bend, and in 145 other locations across Texas, there is a magical place called Rainbow Room. The Rainbow Room is a charitable organization dedicated to providing an essential helping hand to those being served by Texas Family and Protective Services. It is also an actual resource room stocked with snacks, diapers, formula, school supplies, clothes, toiletries, toys, and other items frequently needed to meet the emergency needs of families in crisis. The Fort Bend Rainbow Room, like all the other Rainbow Rooms in the state, supports case workers who work directly with the indispensable needs of the vulnerable.
Prior to the establishment of the Fort Bend Rainbow Room, local caseworkers often used their own funds to buy items essential to those in their care, while waiting for permanent funding solutions. Many of these expenditures were not reimbursable. Knowing this, these caring people still chose to clothe and feed hungry children who had just been rescued from abusive and/or neglectful homes.
Fort Bend Rainbow Room is a member of Greater Texas Community Partners. In all, there are 146 Rainbow Rooms in the state. The first was established in Dallas County with the help of former First Lady Laura Bush, and Fort Bend’s was formed in 1998 by the Fort Bend County Children’s Protective Services. With its establishment, many of the basic needs of abused children and adults have been met with the support of the community.
The mission of the Fort Bend Rainbow Room is to provide emergency and transitional supplies to Fort Bend County children and adults involved with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. The organization’s philosophy is that abused and neglected children and adults do not deserve used items, so only new items are stocked. Receiving items that are new, as opposed to those that are used, can have a significant impact on children in that they feel cared for and that they fit in with their peers at school. In many cases, this may be the first time a child is able to choose something for themselves. This serves as an important beginning, a moment where a child is able to exert some amount of control over their own life.
Approximately 2440 cases of child abuse are reported in Fort Bend each year and 709 adult cases. Of these, approximately 2098 children and 488 adults are assigned to investigations, which makes them illegible to receive services from the Rainbow Room. Because it is available to caseworkers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, caseworkers are able to provide an additional level of care to the children and adults, who, in turn, become clients of the Rainbow Room. Victims of abuse and neglect are brought into custody at all hours of the day and night and need immediate attention. The Rainbow Room is there with all the essentials they require.
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With the community’s help, the Rainbow Room engages in two special projects every year: the Back-to-School Drive and the Christmas Project. The first gives the Rainbow Room the ability to provide children in the system with school uniforms, a backpack, shoes, jackets, and school supplies, which allow them to attend school with the tools they need to be successful. The second provides children and adults with Christmas gifts by giving children the opportunity to make a wish list of three items that they write on a note to Santa and by having the adults also submit a wish list. As well, the adults receive a care package consisting of toiletries, cleaning supplies, a throw blanket, and a $25 drug or grocery store gift card. The Christmas program is especially significant to its recipients as it may account for the only gifts they will receive all year.
Friends from the community provide 100 percent of the Rainbow Room’s funding. Therefore, community involvement is essential. Those interested in becoming involved with this transformative service can do so in a number of ways: becoming a board member or advisory board member, becoming a volunteer, sponsoring a client through the Back-to-School Drive or the Christmas Project, making a monetary or product donation, or supporting annual fund-raising events, like the Rainbow Room’s annual golf tournament. The 15th Annual Pot of Gold Class golf tournament will be held on April 13, 2026.
Volunteer opportunities include: joining fundraising committees, helping with the Back-to-School Drive, helping with the Christmas Project, contributing to grant research, organizing caseworker luncheons, assisting with inventory management, speaking to groups, soliciting donations, and organizing drives for needed items.
The Fort Bend Rainbow Room is the entryway into a better life for many. By providing those at their most vulnerable moment with new clothing and essential supplies, it colors their world with hope and encouragement and is a symbol of better things to come.
