Kerala's First Group Foster Home Offers Family Life Beyond Blood Ties

On a five-cent plot at Thenhipalam in Malappuram district, a two-storey house holds a household that runs on bonds of choice rather than blood. In its front courtyard, seven-year-old Achu (name changed) spends the cooling hours of the afternoon playing cricket with the children he calls his siblings. The youngest of eight, he practises at a cricket academy and dreams of batting like Virat Kohli.

The eight children once faced abandonment, trauma and uncertainty. They now share a home with an elderly "Amma", Santhakumari, and three young women they regard as elder sisters. The children study in classes up to Class X and take part in extracurricular activities, while their caregivers pursue their own studies and careers. Santhakumari continues to stitch, a passion she carried with her to the home. The caregivers and Santhakumari live on the premises full-time and serve voluntarily.

Rise Up Home (RUH) is the work of the Rise Up Forum (RUF), a volunteer-driven collective formed in 2023 and led largely by people from Generation Z. A. Mammu Master, chairperson of the Malappuram district Child Welfare Committee (CWC), describes it as the first group foster-care home in Kerala. Unlike conventional children's homes, many of them run by religious and caste-based organisations, RUH places children in a family-based setting in both environment and socialisation, he says. He finds it particularly encouraging that young people run the initiative, and says they have largely succeeded in giving the children the atmosphere and bonds of a family.

The group traces its origins to the 2018 Kerala floods, when young people who met through social media formed a community and volunteered in relief work. That network grew into an NGO with more than 1,000 members that has taken part in relief and rehabilitation efforts across India. The first RUH home was built through collective effort, including scrap collection, volunteering and contributions gathered from piggy banks. The model aims to create a living ecosystem in which children needing care and protection, the elderly and responsible young people live together as members of an interdependent household rather than as recipients of charity.

Recognised by the State government as a group foster-care home, RUH provides personalised care covering education, healthcare and nutrition in a mixed-gender family environment. Vishnavi, a permanent caregiver who is also pursuing a B.Ed, says the home is a family built by choice, where members support one another over the long term. The group does not treat the work as social service but as a responsibility, she says, adding that caring for the children helps the caregivers themselves grow in empathy, responsibility and emotional maturity.

Caregivers say the family setting has helped the children move past difficult phases. Punya, a caregiver and law graduate, notes that many arrived with learning gaps or emotional struggles and have since made remarkable progress, and that the household enjoys cordial relations with its neighbours. Officials have noticed the change as well. Mammu says visits have shown positive developments in the children; Achu, who was brought to RUH about six months ago through CWC intervention and had been suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, has improved considerably. In his view, the place is better described as a home than an institution.

A second RUH has opened in a rented facility at Feroke in Kozhikode, where six children live. The forum runs both homes with support from donations. Jesna, a permanent caregiver at the Feroke home who is also studying for a B.Ed, says the children grow up together like siblings, learning to respect and support one another and to share responsibilities.

For RUF founder Heshikesh, the second home, opened last year, reinforced the group's belief that the model can be replicated. He says the forum initially did not know whether the idea would work or be sustainable, but it has shown that people from different backgrounds can live together as a family without blood ties, and that the same can be done for children. All it requires, he says, is commitment, because children should not grow up in institutional isolation but as part of families, communities and society.