Cambodia’s Dump Children portrays the harrowing reality facing thousands of Khmer children, forced to work as garbage pickers on Phnom Penh’s Municipal Waste Dump. 24- hours a day, 7 days a week, children as young as 5 scavenge across 6 hectares (100 acres) of the country’s waste, risking their lives dodging bulldozers and jumping in the back of garbage trucks in search for any scrap that can be sold or recycled. For 14 hours of labour, children will earn about 1 US dollar (about 50 pence). Some of these children are forced to work to feed their families while others face the world alone as abandoned or orphaned children, often becoming addicted to drugs or even sold by their families or care-takers into prostitution. A virgin child on Stung Mean Chey can be bought for $200-$300. Many will eventually die from aids. Every minute of every day these children are struggling to survive in the only world they know-one of suffering, poverty and disease. Having to abandon any form of an education, children have little hope of a future away from the dump. A poor diet and lack of healthcare means most children are stunted, suffer from malnutrition, and are prone to disease, often dying at an early age. This film has been made to raise international awareness of the situation and promotes the extreme efforts of a local non-government-organisation, The Centre for Children’s Happiness. The centre’s founder, Mr. Mech Sokha, was orphaned as a young child after his whole family was killed during the Khmer Rouge Regime. He set up the centre to rescue abused, abandoned and orphaned children living on the street or on the dump; providing them with accommodation, education, healthcare, food, clothes and all the love and support needed to transform these children’s lives and give them the hope of a future.
 
 
 
 
 
Watch our film