In 2016, two founders, a Section-8 NGO certificate, and a small caravan of bicycles set out across Krishna District. There was no app, no platform, no Barter Credit. Just a question: what does a village need that a village can give?
Sri Nettem Vijayababu and Smt. Seetha Nettem founded the Barter & Green Foundation in 2016 with one conviction — that India's most marginalised communities are not poor in skill or spirit, only in market access. The state of Telangana issued the registration on the strength of that thesis.
The first programme was Vidya Sambaralu — the "Education Carnival" — a series of awareness rallies through Krishna District schools. Students carried hand-painted Telugu placards calling for clean water, planted trees, and recited the bNg Karyakarta pledge for the first time.
A parallel track was the inaugural Tree Utsav: native saplings (neem, peepal, drumstick, pongamia) distributed to summer-camp graduates, with each child accountable for the survival of one tree through a printed certificate.
No barter, no BC, no dashboard. Just children, sound systems on tractors, and the spark of an idea: that consistent, dignified, voluntary contribution could be the foundation of a new village economy.
