Gift a Garden Mission

Objective: Nutrition for All

To build an equitable urban food system where the most vulnerable citizens, like women and children from low income households, have access to fresh, nutritious produce at home.

Motives

Low income families have limited access to healthy, nutritious food. Children from these families largely depend on their school’s noon-meal scheme for their daily nutrition.
During COVID-19, closing of schools, the increasing prices and reduction in purchasing power due to loss of livelihoods further underscored the level of this community’s vulnerability.
Growing edible gardens can offer some amount of nutritious greens and vegetables to such families, helping improve their general health and well-being while also inspiring others in the community to take up similar efforts.
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Quick growing crops like iron-rich leafy greens can be harvested within 15 days, and can help address the issue of iron deficiency in the girl child.

How You Can Help

Sponsor a Mobile Home Garden Kit for a Vulnerable Family in Need

Each Kit will contain:

5 Grow Bags: 2 Vegetable Grow Bags (Size: 12×12 inches), 3 Greens Grow Bags (Size: 15×9 inches)

6 varieties of Vegetable Seeds*: Ladies Fingers (Vendakkai), Radish (Mullangi), Cluster Beans (Guar), Cowpea (Karamani), Hyacinth Bush Beans (Chedi Avarai), Tomato

5 varieties of Greens Seeds*: Red Spinach (Arai Keerai), Tropical Amaranth (Siru Keerai), Fox Tail Amaranth (Thandu Keerai), Common Purslane (Paruppu Keerai), Spinach (Palak Keerai)

40 kgs of potting mixture, 10 kgs of organic manure-vermicompost, 50 gms of neem oil soap (biopesticide).

COST OF ONE KIT: Rs. 1,500

(*Crops may vary depending on the season)

MAKE A DONATION

FAQs

How will beneficiary families be identified?

We are working with trusted partners on the ground who have been working with vulnerable communities for several years. These vulnerable communities would include families from economically weaker sections of society living in slums, resettlement colonies or in low income neighbourhoods.

Will the family have the necessary space and water resources to set up a garden?

Yes! Families will be identified based on whether they are able to source water and have space to set up a small garden apart from other criteria.

Who will receive my donation and give the garden kit to beneficiaries?

Care Earth Trust (CET), a registered NGO, and an empanelled organization of the State Planning Commission, Tamil Nadu will receive the donation and procure kits to give to the beneficiaries. CET has around 18 years of experience in scientific services, strategic consulting and implementing training and capacity building initiatives in the area of biodiversity conservation and human impact on the environment. CET is a recipient of the prestigious Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar, awarded by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India. CET has FCRA and 80G clearance, and can accept contributions in foreign and Indian currency.

Can I sponsor more than one kit?

Yes! Since each kit serves one family, it is possible to sponsor multiple families by providing funds for more than one kit.

Will I be able to contact / visit the beneficiary families to check on their garden from time to time?

In order to protect the privacy of beneficiaries, it will not be possible to directly contact families or visit the gardens they set up in their homes. However, you will receive periodic updates on the progress of the mission, either through email or WhatsApp, along with photos of garden upkeep and produce harvested.

Can Corporates sponsor garden kits? Are these sponsorship opportunities eligible towards CSR claims?

Yes, sponsorship activities towards the Gift a Garden Mission will be considered as activities relating to the following categories listed by Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013:

eradicating extreme hunger and poverty;
promoting gender equality & empowering women;
ensuring environmental sustainability;

Will my company branding be permitted in the garden kit?

Yes, but to a limited extent only.

This Mission is inspired by the AARFRC COVID-19 Food Relief Efforts in Chennai

Early in 2020, when the lockdown in Chennai came into effect as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable communities across the city were the hardest hit. Adrienne Arsht – Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre (AARFRC) came forward to fund food relief distribution to daily-wagers, women-led households, scheduled caste and tribal communities, and other vulnerable groups that two NGOs, Pudiyador and Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC), were working with in Chennai.

Following emergency food ration distribution, the need for a longer term, sustainable relief measure was apparent. In order to promote food security in these vulnerable families, it was decided that mobile home garden kits, with quick and easy to grow vegetables and greens, could be the answer. A survey of 500 families was conducted and the community response was overwhelmingly positive. Home Garden Kits were then sourced from Sempulam Sustainable Solutions and distributed by Pudiyador and IRCDUC.

The results speak for themselves. Within 3 weeks, families who had received home garden kits were able to harvest fresh greens to supplement their diets.

The Gift a Garden Mission seeks to scale this initiative and give anyone anywhere in the world the ability to Gift a Garden to a family who truly needs it in Chennai.