Saudi aid helps lift Cambodia's children out of the dump

Poverty has a smell and it hits you like a fist at the rubbish tip in Phnom Penh's Stung Meanchey district. The visuals are no less shocking. Puddles of bubbling ooze waft toxic air into the grey sky and sticky maws of mud threaten to consume your foot at every step. Then there are the residents.

Human figures, clad in rags, move through the detritus. A crowd, including many children, chase a rubbish truck as it moves in to dump its latest load. Soon they are picking through its cargo to find tidbits or a saleable piece of junk. Out of shame or guilt, eyes move away and capture a lone, barefoot child standing, crying, amid the carnage.

It's a home no human being should inhabit - yet 20,000 Cambodians live in and around Stung Meanchey.

Just down the road, 14-year-old Sineath plays with her friends in the playground of her school. She stops to talk, crisp blue and white uniform gleaming in the sun. She tells of her five sisters and one brother who have made the escape from Stung Meanchey. Her father is still there she says, eyes dropping, and her mother is sick, probably with tuberculosis. But there is a spark in her eyes and, as she stands to pose for a photo, amid a jostle of friends and fellow students, she shines in the glow of the attention.

'I want to be a teacher here,' she offers when asked of her future.

Sineath's journey from refuse to the three-R's is shared by all the 870 or so students at the non-profit For the Smile of a Child education and training facility. Started by a French couple in 1995, Smile of a Child provides support for children to make the leap out of the rubbish tip. As the children chow down on a lunch of rice and vegetables, support is coming from a hitherto untapped source for a non-Muslim country in Asia: Saudi Arabia.