The Sehgal Foundation Story is About Giving Back
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Sehgal Foundation was created from the shared vision of two people who had the childhood experience of being forced to flee from their countries of origin as a result of major historical events.
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Suri Sehgal was born in a part of India that became Pakistan in 1947. His father was a businessman and community organizer who worked alongside Mahatma Gandhi for India’s independence from British rule. Suri was thirteen when Partition came to India, and his family had to escape their home and live as refugees. Edda Jeglinsky was only three at the end of World War II, when her family had to escape their home in the Silesian lowlands, a region that is now in Poland. Both families eventually survived their perilous circumstances and built new lives—Suri’s family in Amritsar, India, and Edda’s family in Göppingen, Germany.
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Suri came to the US in 1959 to study plant genetics at Harvard University. After witnessing famine in India and experiencing hunger firsthand, he wanted to be part of the solution. While living in Cambridge, he met Edda, who was learning English and living as an au pair for the family of a Harvard professor.
After completing his PhD, Suri took a job with Pioneer Seed Company in Des Moines, Iowa, to gain practical work experience. He and Edda were married there, and Suri began what became a long and successful international career in the seed industry that included research in hybrid seed development to bring high-quality affordable seed to poor farmers around the world. The couple raised four children and two nephews and partnered in running seed businesses in India and Egypt.
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With the lucrative sale in 1998 of a group of their seed companies, Suri and Edda agreed they would share generously with their employees and then use the bulk of their new wealth to give back to Suri’s country of origin in gratitude for all that India had done to prepare him for success in life.
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In the articles of incorporation, the purpose of Sehgal Foundation in the US was “to make resources available to promote” work in sustainable agriculture, plant biodiversity and genetic resources, environmental protection, and women’s literacy. A guiding principle behind those issues was Suri and Edda’s desire to help the poor farming communities of rural India, with special attention to empowering girls and women, to have secure, prosperous, and dignified lives.
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Frustrated by the limitations of “funding other organizations and their projects,” Suri and Edda launched S M Sehgal Foundation (SMSF) in India in 1999 as a way to develop and test innovative models of sustainable rural development for the benefit of the millions of small-scale farmers in India’s oft-neglected villages.
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Suri and Edda and their team on the ground soon realized that the lack of usable water was a critical issue facing the Mewat villages in the semi-arid region of India where SMSF first began work. Water Management thus became a primary program along with Agriculture Development. The Local Participation and Sustainability Program, with an emphasis on good rural governance, emerged as the SMSF team saw that improvements being made would not be sustainable in the long term without proper village-level empowerment and oversight. Key programs of SMSF address India’s most pressing issues: water scarcity, food scarcity, and social justice. And featured within each program are digital literacy and life-skills training programs for girls and young women, and vocational training for boys and young men. SMSF programs blend well with a concept that became a new flagship program launched at the end of 2016—Transform Lives one school at a time, which combines aspects of all other programs to ensure a better future for schoolchildren who attend government schools in rural India.
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Sehgal Foundation, along with a strong base of corporate, government, and individual donor partners, continues to support SMSF’s vital, groundbreaking work. SMSF has received multiple local, national, and international awards for its programs and innovations. With more than two decades of experience, dedicated supporters and advisors, and a clear vision for expanding its successful programs across the country, Sehgal Foundation is bringing real positive change to rural India.