Most Dangerous Ways To School - BOLIVIA

Most Dangerous Ways To School - BOLIVIA

The Yungas Valley in Bolivia: a unique landscape, where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon Rain Forest. In this remote section of one of the poorest countries in South America, children have a very long and incredible dangerous walk to school ahead of them. All for one goal: education – for a better life.

Seven-year-old Elmer wants to become an engineer and to build his own house, far away from the remote village. But his only way to school leads over a ravine more than 650 feet deep and about 1000 feet long: a kind of homemade zip-line. He has to entrust his live on a rusty iron pulley and a worn plastic bag.

On the other side of the valley, on the summit of the mountain range, is where the sisters Helen and Mariela live. Isolated, and in the heart of the jungle. Of all the children who attend the school, the sisters live furthest away. Fear, hunger, and exhaustion are their constant companions. For them, education the key to a new, better world. And that’s why they run great risks every day in pursuit of it.

All this is more than just a walk to school – It is a test in the vast jungle. Throughout this journey they all have only one goal in mind: to ultimately find a job in a city and lead a better life.