Sandra Lavie Quit Her Dubai Job 15 Years Ago To Build A Free School In Rural India: Here’s What It Looks Like Today

Fifteen years ago, Sandra Lavie resigned from a well-paying corporate job in Dubai, packed two shirts and two pairs of trousers, and boarded a one-way flight to India. She had grown up in Switzerland and, by her own account, had every comfort that financial success brings. What she didn’t have, she says, was an answer to one question that kept surfacing: why had she been given so much while so many others had so little.

She travelled through India largely alone and by train, an experience she describes to TOI Women as unfamiliar and often overwhelming, but ultimately the source of the ‘simplicity, purpose and perspective’ she says she had been missing. That search eventually led her to Sagar Island in West Bengal, reached by a long train journey followed by a boat crossing, where she began speaking directly with villagers about what they needed rather than arriving with a fixed plan.

Building trust took real work. As a foreign woman asking local families to send their children to a new school, Sandra says she went door to door herself, slowly turning scepticism into enrolment – one child, then ten, then dozens. Her organisation now runs a free primary school teaching 150 children across five classes.

Alongside the school, 120 more children studying in government schools receive tuition support and nutritious daily meals, and 20 women have gone through sewing training designed to build financial independence. The organisation also works on raising awareness about domestic violence, child marriage and human trafficking, alongside its core education work.

‘Material possessions are temporary,’ Sandra told TOI Women, reflecting on the corporate life she left behind. ‘True purpose comes from serving others, creating opportunities, and standing beside those who have been denied them.’