This Swiss Woman Gave Up A Corporate Career To Knock On Doors In Rural Bengal

Fifteen years ago, Sandra Lavie Gojkovic was building the kind of career most professionals are told to aim for — a well-paying corporate job in Dubai, an upscale apartment, a car, and the financial freedom to travel internationally. Today she runs a free school on a remote island in West Bengal, and the two chapters of her life barely resemble each other.

The Swiss-educated professional has said the turning point was a question she couldn’t put down: ‘Why had I been given so much while so many others had so little?’ She resigned from her job, packed two shirts and two pairs of trousers, and flew to India on a one-way ticket without a fixed plan.

What followed was a long, largely solo journey across the country by train. ‘India was a culture shock, but it also gave me exactly what I had been searching for: simplicity, purpose and perspective,’ she has said.

She hadn’t intended to start her own organisation — the original idea was to fund ones that already existed. Seeing recurring financial mismanagement in that space changed her approach, and she decided instead to build something transparent and shaped by what communities on the ground said they actually needed.

That decision eventually took her to Sagar Island, reachable only by a two-and-a-half-hour train ride and an hour by boat, home to the ashram of Kapila Muni. She spent time listening to residents across three villages there before deciding what to build, then went from door to door convincing parents to trust her with their children’s schooling.

That groundwork has turned into a free primary school for 150 children across five classes, tuition support and daily meals for another 120 children enrolled in government schools, and sewing training for 20 women aimed at building financial independence — part of a wider programme that also raises awareness of domestic violence, child marriage and human trafficking.

‘True purpose comes from serving others, creating opportunities, and standing beside those who have been denied them,’ she has said, fifteen years into work she describes as her life’s mission.

Wikimedia Commons/by Mettle30