She Left Dubai’s Corporate Life For A Remote Bengal Island: Inside Sandra Lavie’s 15-Year School Project

Sandra Lavie grew up in Switzerland and built her career in Dubai’s corporate world, with the apartment, the car and the travel that usually come attached to that kind of job. Fifteen years ago she gave it all up, resigning and flying to India with two shirts, two pairs of trousers and no itinerary.

She spent her early months in the country travelling largely by train, alone, in what she describes to TOI Women as an unpredictable but clarifying experience. It eventually brought her to Sagar Island in West Bengal, a location reached only after a two-and-a-half-hour train journey and a further hour by boat, and home to the ashram of Kapila Muni.

Sandra’s initial instinct was to fund existing organisations rather than start her own. That changed once she saw how many local projects were undermined by poor implementation and financial mismanagement, pushing her instead to build something she could run transparently herself, built around what villagers on the island actually told her they needed.

Convincing families to enrol their children in a school run by a foreign woman took time and door-to-door visits. What began with a handful of children has grown into a free primary school for 150 children across five classes, alongside tuition support and daily meals for 120 more children in government schools, and sewing training for 20 women working toward financial independence. The organisation also runs awareness efforts on domestic violence, child marriage and human trafficking.

‘While working in India, I learned one very important thing – that real change starts with villages,’ Sandra said, explaining why she chose to build her project away from the cities most outsiders gravitate toward.