From Swiss Boardrooms to India’s Classrooms: A Journey of Purpose in Rural India

• Sandra Lavie Gojkovic left a corporate career in Switzerland 15 years ago to seek purpose in India.

• Founded a free primary school in a remote West Bengal village.

• School empowers children to resist child marriage, trafficking and domestic abuse.

• Faced culture shock, financial risks and community distrust.

• Focuses on transparent, community-led development at the grassroots level.

Fifteen years ago, Sandra Lavie Gojkovic boarded a one-way flight to India with no detailed roadmap for what lay ahead. She walked away from a stable corporate career in Switzerland and Dubai, financial comfort, and a predictable future in pursuit of something she felt was missing — meaning.

Today, that decision has culminated in a free primary school in a remote village in West Bengal, where education has become a tool not only for literacy but also for social transformation.

A Shift from Success to Significance

Raised in Zurich, one of the world’s most affluent cities, Lavie describes her upbringing as secure and opportunity-rich. Travel played a defining role in her childhood. Exposure to starkly different living conditions left lasting impressions, including a childhood memory of giving away her boots to a barefoot homeless girl — a moment she now sees as her first lesson in empathy.

Professionally, she built a successful corporate career across Switzerland and Dubai. By conventional standards, she had achieved stability and independence. Yet frequent international travel deepened her discomfort with visible inequality.

“The more I saw, the harder it became to ignore the imbalance,” she has said, reflecting on the growing internal conflict between material comfort and moral questioning.

Eventually, she resigned, packed minimally — two shirts and two pairs of trousers — and relocated to India. The simplicity, she says, was deliberate. It symbolized a break from excess and an embrace of uncertainty.

Early Struggles in a New Land

Her arrival in India was far from seamless. She encountered immediate culture shock, was deceived at the airport, and adjusted to modest living conditions unlike anything she had previously experienced. Doubts surfaced.

Yet alongside hardship, she experienced unexpected kindness. Strangers offered meals and hospitality, helping soften the challenges of transition. Over time, India shifted from being a destination to becoming home.

Lavie also found herself deeply influenced by the principles of Sanatana Dharma, particularly its emphasis on service and duty. Those philosophical foundations, she says, reshaped her understanding of responsibility and fulfillment.

Rethinking Charity

Initially, Lavie intended to donate her savings to established charitable organisations. However, months of volunteering across different NGOs exposed her to operational gaps.

She observed instances of financial inefficiency and projects misaligned with community needs. The experience led her to conclude that sustainable change required transparency, accountability and strong local participation.

Determined to understand root causes rather than symptoms, she asked residents to guide her to underserved rural communities. She believed poverty often begins in villages where limited opportunity drives migration to urban slums. Long-term progress, she reasoned, must start where life and livelihoods originate.

Building Trust in West Bengal

Her search eventually brought her to a remote island in West Bengal, accessible only after a two-and-a-half-hour train journey and a further hour by boat. Rather than imposing preconceived solutions, she spent her time listening to villagers’ concerns.

Out of those conversations emerged the blueprint for a free primary school — one that now operates as both an educational institution and a community anchor.

However, establishing the school required overcoming deep skepticism. As a foreigner proposing formal education in a community where children’s labour contributed to family income, she faced understandable resistance.

Many children accompanied parents to collect shrimp eggs or worked in other informal occupations. Convincing families to prioritise schooling over immediate earnings required patience and sustained dialogue.

Education as Empowerment

Over time, the school has grown beyond its academic mission. Students are encouraged to question harmful social practices, including child marriage, human trafficking and domestic violence. In doing so, they become advocates within their own households and neighbourhoods.

Lavie’s story recently gained renewed attention after she shared reflections on Instagram about her transition from corporate executive to grassroots educator. The narrative resonated widely, drawing interest to her long-standing work in rural India.

While the transformation may appear dramatic, Lavie views it as a gradual evolution driven by introspection and lived experience.

Her journey underscores a broader message: that meaningful development often begins not in metropolitan centres, but in villages where opportunity remains limited. By focusing on transparency and community involvement, she believes sustainable change becomes possible.

Fifteen years after stepping into the unknown, Lavie’s experiment in purpose continues — not in boardrooms, but in classrooms shaped by resilience and hope.