Vegetable seeds for village kitchens

A fruit tree is a gift that pays off in three years. The families the Foundation works with needed something sooner, because green vegetables are often beyond their budget. So in 2015 the Foundation began distributing packets of vegetable seeds alongside its fruit saplings.

The first round reached 3,500 families in 52 villages of Bareilly, with seeds of cauliflower, spinach, fenugreek, carrot, tomato, bottle gourd, ridge gourd, beans, turnip, chilli, cowpea, cucumber, tinda and okra. On 2 October 2015, seed packets were also part of Aparajita, the Foundation's gathering of village women in Bareilly, where women were enrolled in life insurance as well.

In 2016 the packets went to 5,000 families in about 100 villages of Amethi. Each held seeds of 14 vegetables chosen so that something could be sown in every season. Distributions continued in the villages of Bareilly through the winter of 2016–17, and by March 2017 farmers were lining up at village centres to collect their packets for the coming season.