From Dubai Boardrooms To A West Bengal Island: How Swiss Expat Sandra Lavie Built A Free School From Scratch

It is not unusual for people to talk about wanting to give back. It is rarer for someone to walk away from a corporate salary, an apartment and a car in Dubai to actually do it with almost nothing in hand. That is what Sandra Lavie, originally from Switzerland, did fifteen years ago when she resigned from her job and flew to India carrying just two shirts and two pairs of trousers.

She initially assumed that donating money to existing organisations would be enough. Spending time on the ground changed her mind. ‘I discovered recurring issues, including financial mismanagement and ineffective development work,’ she says, which is what pushed her to build something of her own instead – transparent, sustainable, and shaped around what people on the ground actually asked for.

Her search for where to start took her away from cities and eventually to Sagar Island, reached only after a long train journey followed by a boat crossing. She spent time in three villages there simply listening before deciding what form her project would take, a foundation she says has held for fifteen years since.

Trust did not come automatically. As a foreign woman asking local families to send their children to a new school, Sandra says she went door to door herself. The numbers built slowly – one child, then ten, then dozens – until her organisation was running a free school for 150 children across five classes, alongside tuition and meal support for another 120 children in government schools, and sewing training for 20 women.

Fifteen years on, she says she measures success differently than she once did. ‘True purpose comes from serving others, creating opportunities, and standing beside those who have been denied them,’ she told TOI Women, looking back on the corporate career she left behind without regret.