Rewriting Their Story

Scott Neeson Madeleine Ross

charitable intentions or history of giving. In fact, I was fairly cynical about charities.”

A trip to Cambodia radically changed his life. Phnom Penh was never meant to be more than a stopover en route to Angkor Wat, and would have been just that if it weren’t for a defining encounter Neeson had at the city’s notorious Stung Meanchey rubbish dump. The 40-hectare landfill is the home and workplace of several thousand of the region’s poorest people, most of them children and teenagers, who sort through piles of hazardous filth for salvageable material.

Neeson spotted a child alone amid the waste. “I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl; she was skinny and swathed in rags. I called over my translator and within 20 minutes we’d found the girl’s mother and I’d arranged to get them a house, money each week, schooling for the girl and medical