Synopsis:

Six students from the comprehensive Harrogate Grammar School have been working with their school’s charity Quaker Bolivia Link on a project in a rural village in Bolivia, called Sivincani.

The Harrogate students go to Sivincani to see how their project with the villagers to build greenhouses and water pumps is making a difference. The greenhouses mean families can grow a wider variety of crops; the water pumps mean families have access to clean water.

This all seems to be a success, but the younger people in the village have been on the edge of all the celebrations. And when the students finally get to talk to a teenager called Celia they are shocked to hear that she and her friends want to leave Sivincani for a better life in the city.

The students try their hand at living off the land and find it’s not easy. They then go to Bolivia’s biggest city La Paz to discover what the attraction is. There they see the markets and more affluent way of life, before visiting the ramshackle development El Alto that has grown up around the outskirts of the city. They meet a group of women who used to struggle to earn a living, but have formed a co-operative to provide the sort of community network often lacking in the city.

Finally the young people return to Sivincani to find out what the people think the future holds for their community. Florentina, the head of the women’s group, says she wants to learn new skills in the city so that she can bring them back to help her people in the village.