Sandra Lavie Gojkovic’s Sagar Island School: How Education Became a Wider Child-Protection Effort

On Sagar Island in West Bengal’s Sundarbans, Swiss-born Sandra Lavie Gojkovic helped establish a free primary school after travelling through India and speaking with rural families about their needs. The initiative, known as the India School Project, later extended into education support, women’s livelihood training and awareness work on child marriage, trafficking and domestic violence. The important part of this story is not simply that she left a comfortable corporate life. It is how local teachers, families and young volunteers helped turn one school into a longer-term effort to keep children learning and safer.

How a school began on Sagar Island

Gojkovic has said that she first visited India in 2011 and used her savings to support work in a community that was difficult to reach by train and boat. Reporting by India Today, Business Today and Hindustan Times describes the school beginning in 2013. Families on the island faced unstable livelihoods, transport difficulties and recurring cyclone risks. According to Gojkovic, government schools already existed, but reliable attendance and regular teaching were not always assured in the villages she encountered. That account reflects her experience; it is not an independent audit of every government school in the area.

Finding a building and teaching materials did not guarantee that children would attend. Some parents needed their children’s help with work, and families had to be convinced that regular school attendance was worth the immediate costs. Local teachers went door to door, worked with parents and brought children to school. Gojkovic credits this patient community involvement with an increase in enrolment. It also shows why attributing the entire outcome to one foreign founder would miss essential local work.

From classroom lessons to education support

In a September 2026 interview with Hindustan Times, Gojkovic described a free primary-school programme serving about 180 children in five classes, with lessons, materials and a meal. A separate education-support initiative, run with two government schools since 2015, provides additional tutoring. She reported that board-exam pass rates among participating pupils rose from 50% to 100%. The figures are useful indicators of the organisation’s reported experience, but the available reports do not provide independently audited enrolment records, sample sizes or year-by-year exam data. They should not be read as a verified outcome for all schools or children in the Sundarbans.

India’s Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 already guarantees free and compulsory elementary education for children aged six to fourteen. A charitable school cannot replace that public responsibility. The lesson from Sagar Island is more specific: a legal right and a nearby school are not enough if poverty, irregular attendance, weak learning support or unsafe circumstances prevent a child from benefiting from education. Persistent teaching, contact with parents and practical assistance matter alongside public provision.

Why child protection became part of the work

As the school team came to know families, it also addressed risks beyond the classroom. Reporting based on the India School Project’s account describes community awareness programmes concerning child marriage, human trafficking, domestic violence and children’s rights. Business Today reported the organisation’s figures of 112 trained youth leaders and roughly 20,000 people reached across 30 villages. Those are reported programme reach figures, not a count of children demonstrably rescued from trafficking or marriages prevented. Such stronger claims would require individual case records and careful independent verification.

Women’s vocational training and income opportunities form another part of the initiative. This connection is practical: a household under financial pressure may struggle to support a child’s schooling, and women’s ability to earn and make decisions can help families respond. But the existence of training alone does not prove lasting increases in household income or lower rates of exploitation; those outcomes need follow-up evidence.

What the example establishes—and what it cannot establish alone

The Better India Hindi’s Instagram reel, published in collaboration with Gojkovic on 16 August 2026, presents her move from corporate comfort to work in rural Bengal as an inspiring personal choice. Interviews published by several news organisations support the broad timeline and the existence of the initiative. The reel’s claim that one decision has changed thousands of lives is a wider statement of impact than available independent outcome evidence can establish. The available reporting supports the existence and reported reach of the programmes, while precise changes in education, safety and livelihoods remain largely based on the organisation’s descriptions.

The strongest supported conclusion is that Gojkovic and her local colleagues have sustained a multifaceted community initiative in a remote part of West Bengal. This is valuable work because children deserve accessible education and protection from exploitation, regardless of who funds or organises the help. The wider public lesson is not that charity should take over the state’s duties, but that steady local engagement, accountable public services and practical support for vulnerable families must work together. The project’s long-term success should be judged by children’s continued learning, safety and opportunities—not solely by an uplifting personal story or impressive headline numbers.