She Traded Dubai’s Skyline For A Two-And-A-Half-Hour Train Ride To Nowhere

There was no map for what Sandra Lavie Gojkovic did next. Fifteen years ago, she had a well-paying corporate job in Dubai, an upscale apartment, a car and the means to travel wherever she liked. She resigned from all of it, packed two shirts and two pairs of trousers, and boarded a one-way flight to India.

The Swiss-educated professional has traced the decision back to a single recurring question: ‘Why had I been given so much while so many others had so little?’ There was no grand plan waiting on the other side, just a long, mostly solo trip across India by train.

‘I explored India alone by train, a bit crazy now that I think back, and for the first time in my life, I felt completely free,’ she has said. ‘I had very little, yet I had never been happier.’

She had originally planned only to fund organisations already active in the country. Watching some of that money get lost to mismanagement pushed her to start something herself instead — smaller, transparent, and built around what local communities actually asked for rather than what sounded good on paper.

The place she settled on was Sagar Island in West Bengal, reachable by a two-and-a-half-hour train ride followed by an hour on a boat, and home to the ashram of Kapila Muni. She spent time there listening to residents across three villages before building anything, then went door to door asking wary parents to enrol their children.

That process has grown into a free primary school teaching 150 children across five classes, tuition support and daily meals for another 120 children in government schools, and sewing training for 20 women working toward financial independence — alongside broader awareness efforts on domestic violence, child marriage and human trafficking.

Fifteen years in, she says she no longer measures success by promotions or pay cheques. ‘Helping people who are less fortunate is not simply something I do,’ she has said. ‘It is my life’s mission. I will continue this work for as long as I live.’

Wikimedia Commons/by Mettle30