Education, considered one of society’s greatest equalisers, became the focal point of a nationwide stir across India recently. Despite being inked into a fundamental right under Article 21A of the Constitution, the topic captured the imagination of the nation, became a common platform for people from diverse backgrounds to rally around, and forced the country to think about the opportunities available to one of its most significant assets — the young.
Travelling across India, mostly by train, exposed her to a very different reality in 2011, and what began as a journey of self-discovery led her to set up the India School Project which has helped boost literacy rates in rural villages, empowered women through vocational training and generated awareness against child marriage , human trafficking and domestic violence . It now covers 180 children across five classes, who get a pure vegetarian meal, teacher support and learning material simply for showing up. Since early 2015, it has partnered with two public schools south of Kolkata to offer 3.5 hours of tutoring. Managed by four teachers and one social worker, it has lifted the annual board exam pass rate from 50% to 100%, as verified by Sandra.
Sandra Lavie Gojkovic, a young Swiss woman offered all the comfort and convenience one may pray for, chose to live not just for herself but for those less fortunate around her. A foreign national with an unfamiliar appearance and no grasp of the local tongue, she set up a school on Sagar Island, where her earliest challenge was persuading families to send their children. “Many parents did not yet understand the importance of regular education. Local teachers on her team, who understood the rural community better, proved crucial. Eventually, the tide turned. The Primary School Project, one of her earliest initiatives, began by offering core subjects and extra-curricular activities to village students free of cost. A parallel literacy programme, Education Support, addresses the high dropout rate in local schools. Cyclones are a recurring threat.
For some families living with very little income, the immediate needs of survival naturally came first,” she said in an interview with HT. “They would literally go from house to house and pick up the children every morning to bring them to school,” she said. “I remember thinking at one point, ‘This is not going to work.'” Her team refused to give up, showing the importance of education through the children themselves. “Instead of us going from house to house asking parents to send their children, we suddenly had parents queuing up because they wanted their children to attend our school,” she said. “The communities we work with experience cyclones regularly, and these are not distant environmental events for them — they can completely disrupt people’s lives,” she said. After one severe cyclone, the school sheltered families “who had lost everything”.
