Meet Pragati Chaswal: She quit a well-paid job to help 78k children grow their own food

Every evening, Pragati Chaswal watched her young son do the same thing at the dinner table. He would quietly push the vegetables aside. It wasn't just that he didn't want to eat them. What troubled Pragati more was that he had no idea where they came from or why they mattered.That simple moment at home stayed with her. And without realizing it, it also planted the seed for a journey that would eventually touch the lives of 78,000 children.Today, the Delhi-based entrepreneur is helping school children across Delhi-NCR reconnect with nature by teaching them how to grow their own food. But just a few years ago, her life looked very different.Before she became known for urban farming and sustainability education, Pragati spent more than a decade in advertising. She worked with leading advertising agencies before moving to a startup. It was a career that offered creativity, exciting campaigns and professional success.Yet something didn't feel right. "The creativity was rewarding professionally, but personally, I felt a void. I kept thinking what am I building? Whom is it helping?" she told The Better India.In 2013, she decided to take a break from work. She imagined it would be a short sabbatical before returning to corporate life. Instead, it became the turning point she never saw coming.A lesson that began at home With work no longer consuming every hour of her day, Pragati started paying attention to the little things around her. One of them was her son, Neel. "It was the first time in years I stepped back to observe my life," she recalls.She noticed that Neel would casually remove vegetables from his plate. "He would pick out vegetables from his plate and push them aside, never asking why he needed to eat them or where they came from. He didn't care if they went to waste. That indifference started to bother me," she recalled.As she looked beyond her own home, she realised this wasn't unique to her son. Many city children knew how to order food online, but had never seen a tomato plant. They could recognize brands, but not seasons. Vegetables came from supermarkets, not from soil."It was shocking. We talk about nutrition and health, but we've completely cut children off from the source: the Earth," she says.She didn't lecture him, she handed him a seedPragati could have insisted that Neel finish his vegetables. Instead, she chose a different approach. She began growing food on the terrace of their home. Tomatoes. Spinach. Herbs. Seasonal vegetables. Over time, her small terrace turned into a thriving garden with more than 35 varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs. "I wanted Neel to understand why he needed to eat vegetables, not just as something on his plate, but as living things that grow from the Earth," she says.Something unexpected happened. Her son wasn't just learning about vegetables. He was becoming curious. He wanted to water the plants. He noticed the changing weather. He watched tiny seeds become food.Learning before teachingThe more Pragati explored farming, the more she realized she wanted to understand it properly. She enrolled in a Diploma in Organic Farming at IGNOU, completed it in 2015, and went on to study organic farming, permaculture and sustainable practices."It was important for me to learn thoroughly so I could teach other children and make the process meaningful, not just a hobby," she says. What had started as a mother's experiment was slowly becoming something much bigger.A classroom where children learn with soil on their hands In 2017, Pragati founded the SowGood Foundation. Her vision was to make sustainability something children experience, not just read about. The first farm was small, involving only a handful of children and their families. But the idea resonated. "Everyone believed it was essential for children to understand that reusing and recycling items is important. Equally, they should know where their food comes from," she says.As word spread, more schools reached out. Government schools joined the program. Private schools followed. Teachers saw students becoming more engaged when learning happened outdoors instead of inside four classroom walls.More than just farming Walk into one of SowGood's school gardens today and you won't find children memorising definitions. You'll find them kneeling beside garden beds, checking if seeds have sprouted, feeling the soil, spotting insects and learning why every living thing plays a role in nature.Looking back at her son, Pragati says she realised growing food was never really about vegetables. "I started growing food with the objective that my son would start eating vegetables. 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."That philosophy now shapes every program the foundation runs. Students don't just hear about sustainability: they practice it.One woman's idea, 78,000 young changemakersToday, SowGood has reached more than 78,000 children across 28 schools in Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Gujarat, including 20 government schools and 8 private schools. The organization has also developed a three-year curriculum that weaves farming and sustainability into everyday school life. For many of these children, planting a seed is the first time they truly understand where food comes from.For Pragati, it is proof that meaningful change doesn't always begin with a grand plan. Sometimes, it begins with a child refusing to eat vegetables, a mother asking herself one difficult question, and the decision to do something about it. Because the most powerful lessons, she discovered, don't always come from books. Sometimes, they grow quietly from the soil beneath our feet.