On a sunny morning in Delhi, the rooftop of a school buzzes with activity. Children crouch over planters, examining tiny green sprouts, feeling the soil between their fingers, and learning lessons far beyond what a textbook can offer. This is the world that Pragati Chaswal, founder of the SowGood Foundation, has been nurturing since 2017.

“I started growing food with the objective that my son would start eating vegetables,” she recalls, with a smile. “But what I noticed was so much more. He was connecting with soil, observing how plants grew, noticing when it was hot or cold, and beginning to understand that plants, like him, needed care. It was a world of learning that textbooks could never teach.”

The road that began as a personal experiment gradually grew into a vision of bringing hands-on sustainability education to schoolchildren. By 2018, she had developed a three-year integrated curriculum and partnered with government schools, embedding urban farming directly into students’ timetables. Today, her programme has touched 78,000 children across 28 schools in Delhi, the NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Gujarat, including 20 government and eight private schools.

From curiosity to curriculum

She realised that for most children, knowledge of soil, crops, and climate change existed only in theory.

“They may be able to tell you what composting is, but if you ask how to do it, there is often no answer,” she tells The Better India. “I wanted children to experience where their food comes from and understand the actions they could take in their daily lives. Experiencing nature is learning at its purest.”

The SowGood programme is designed to immerse children fully. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she adapted the curriculum into online modules, making sure that even without classrooms, children could continue connecting with nature.

Laying the foundations

For schools eager to start, Pragati emphasises the importance of having a committed champion.

“Creating a garden is easy. But if you want a learning farm, someone must lead the project, a teacher or volunteer who will nurture it, guide the........

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