Scott Neeson left Hollywood to save children rooting in Cambodia's garbage dumps

Scott Neeson, a former head of 20th Century Fox International, cares for more than 1,000 Cambodian children and their families. (Gemma Harris/Cambodian Children’s Fund)

He sold his mansion, Porsche, and yacht and set off for Cambodia to provide food, shelter, and education to destitute children.

By Tibor Krausz, Correspondent / August 10, 2012

The Christian Science Monitor

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Scott Neeson's final epiphany came one day in June 2004. The high-powered Hollywood executive stood, ankle deep in trash, at the sprawling landfill of Stung Meanchey, a poor shantytown in Cambodia's capital.

In a haze of toxic fumes and burning waste, swarms of Phnom Penh's most destitute were rooting through refuse, jostling for scraps of recyclables in newly dumped loads of rubbish. They earned 4,000 riel ($1) a day – if they were lucky.

Many of the garbage sorters were young children. Covered in filthy rags, they were scruffy, sickly, and sad.

Clasped to Mr. Neeson's ear was his cellphone. Calling the movie mogul from a US airport, a Hollywood superstar's agent was complaining bitterly about inadequate in-flight entertainment on a private jet that Sony Pictures Entertainment, where Neeson was head of overseas theatrical releases, had provided for his client.

Neeson overheard the actor griping in the background. " 'My life wasn't meant to be this difficult.' Those were his exact words," Neeson says. "I was standing there in that humid, stinking garbage dump with children sick with typhoid, and this guy was refusing to get on a Gulfstream IV because he couldn't find a specific item onboard," he recalls. "If I ever wanted validation I was doing the right thing, this was it."

Cambodian Children Fund Receives Generous Donation from Credit Suisse (Hong Kong)

Three New Schools to Service the Most Impoverished Communities

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia and HONG KONG, April 17, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Cambodian Children's Fund (CCF), a non-profit charity that provides education and other social services to impoverished children and families of Phnom Penh, announced that it has received a US$90,000 donation from Credit Suisse (Hong Kong).

"We are very thankful for Credit Suisse's generosity to our cause," said Scott Neeson, Executive Director of CCF. "With their support, we are able to expand and build schools to allow more children into our program."

Based in Steung Meanchey, a district of Phnom Penh, the organisation has educated hundreds of children using its internal education system teamed with the public school system. However, CCF is seeing more children enrolling in school faster than they can build classrooms. With the donation from Credit Suisse, CCF is able to open three more satellite schools.

Post story leads to relief for impoverished young girl

Theng Sreyleak talks to Post reporter Khouth Sophak Chakrya. Photo by Meng Kimlong

Friday, 16 March 2012
Khouth Sophak Chakrya
The Phnom Penh Post

Twelve-year-old Theng Sreyleak has had a tough life for a young girl – she was born HIV-positive in 2000, lost both parents when she was only three, and on January 3 suffered another blow when she was forcibly evicted from the controversial Borei Keila site along with her aunt and grandmother.

Caught up in one of Cambodia’s more controversial land disputes, Theng Sreyleak and her younger sister had settled in Borei Keila with her aunt and grandmother after her parents had died, and life wasn’t easy.

Her aunt and grandmother did their best to support the two girls by selling religious items in O’Russey market, and she was offered anti-retroviral medicine from the National Pediatric Hospital.

Theng Sreyleak was also getting some schooling and was in grade-five while her sister was in grade-nine.

Sumner M. Redstone Charitable Foundation Donates $500,000 To The Cambodian Children's Fund

New Gift To Provide Long-Term Support To The Child Rescue Center Launched In 2007 With A Grant From The Redstone Foundation

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., April 14, 2011 — /PRNewswire/ -- Sumner M. Redstone today announced a second grant of $500,000 to the Cambodian Children's Fund (CCF), a non-profit program that provides a wide range of critical health and educational services to impoverished and abused children in Cambodia's capital city of Phnom Penh. This most recent gift brings Mr. Redstone's total commitment to CCF to $1 million.

Mr. Redstone's initial $500,000 grant in 2007 established CCF's child rescue center, now a thriving community facility providing the most at-risk children with education, health care, nutrition and play area, all within a secure environment. The center cares for children of all ages, from newborns in the CCF Nursery program and three- to six-year-olds in its daycare, to those in their teens wanting the opportunity to study. A maternal care program ensures that each child enters the world as healthy as possible and into a family that understands childcare, nutrition and basic child development. The additional $500,000 grant from Mr. Redstone will help fund the continued operations of the center.

Cambodian Children’s Fund

May 7th, 2010
Religion & Ethics

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: If kids are any judge of character, Scott Neeson must be doing something right.

SOEMSO NOEUON: He is so kind. He help poor families and they can get a better life like me.

SEVERSON: Soemso Noeuon is one of about 500 kids whose lives have been made a whole lot better by the Cambodian Children’s Fund known as the CCF that Neeson founded seven years ago. It may be the best schooling in Cambodia.

SEVERSON: This is Ally Hoffman, one of Neeson’s volunteers.

ALLY HOFFFMAN: I tell Scott that I can tell who’s been here longer because it’s almost like watching something flower.

SEVERSON: Hard to imagine that some of these sweet, clean faces are the same he found at the Phnom Penh garbage dump when he first arrived here 7 years ago. There were a thousand families existing in the rubble—kids scrounging barefoot through broken glass, jagged metal, and bubbling chemical waste hoping to earn 50 cents a day from scrap. Oaoknay Houy was one of them.

OAOKNAY HOUY: When I got money I give it to my uncles and aunt. I never have money to buy anything like food to eat. Some day I don’t have food to eat.

SCOTT NEESON: It just blew me away. It just was the most appalling situation I have ever seen, just the level of suffering and tragedy down there, the level of impoverishment and lack of any kind of human dignity. It was just—I couldn’t walk away.

SEVERSON: He had been just passing through, a backpacking tourist, but within a year he had given up his very lucrative job as a president of a division of Sony Pictures, his multi-million-dollar home, his fancy cars, his yacht.

(speaking to Scott Neeson): You were a man of means.

NEESON: I was a man of means and luxuries, and yet I sort of enjoyed it but I wasn’t particularly happy.

SEVERSON: A year after he moved here, using his own money and contributions from friends, he opened a boarding school for 40 kids, many of whom had been abandoned by their parents. A couple of years later, enrollment had grown to 180. Now he has over 500 students in five schools, including a vocational school. Students here can learn crafts like sewing, design, hair styling, even baking. Several graduates have found jobs in local businesses. Patrick McKinley volunteered two years of his life at CCF.

PATRICK MCKINLEY: These kids want to do things themselves, and the price of getting it wrong for them is one they’ve already paid, and they see on the streets what’s waiting for them if they don’t get it right, so they work very hard.

SEVERSON: In the beginning it was all about education, but it wasn’t long before Neeson realized that a kid who is constantly sick or malnourished or lives in an abusive family is not going to be a good student. So CCF gradually expanded its mission to include outreach programs for the whole impoverished community that surrounds the dump.

SCOTT NEESON: She has a hole in her heart so she’s struggling to breathe, has got heart issues.

(Doctor speaking with patient): All right, look right at me, okay?

SEVERSON: Because so many people need medical care CCF built a clinic not just for the youngsters, but for their families.

NEESON: It’s possibly the only fully free medical clinic, I think, in the country that treats everyone, everything, regardless of age and disease.

SEVERSON: The doctors from Cambodia and around the world are all volunteers, like Kristin Schroeder, a pediatrician from Nebraska.

DR. KRISTIN SCHROEDER: Last year I was looking for a place to volunteer in Southeast Asia, and I wrote a letter to different nonprofit organizations, and Scott wrote me a letter back saying that, I think his exact words were, “I would crawl over broken glass to have a pediatrician come to CCF.” I can’t refuse that.

SEVERSON: The little girl getting a checkup—her name is Sien—was skin and bones a few years ago. Now she’s Neeson’s number one student, studying to become a doctor.

NEESON: I was at a wedding, and I felt something rustling at my feet under the table, and I thought it was a rat. I jumped in the air. It was Sien was under there collecting scrap food and the bottles, and that’s how we met.

CHANNOEURNH SOK (Scott Neeson’s Assistant): Scott really wants to help all the children that he sees, yes, and he hopes to help all of them. He will save the world if he can.

NEESON (with sack over his shoulder): Delivered to the door.

SEVERSON: Today he’s the delivery man, dropping off free rice to families who might earn $500 a year if they’re lucky. Here he’s handing out care packages for newborns, and for mothers who have no money to pay for a babysitter while they work CCF opened a day care school, and for those who need help with their babies, a free nursery.

NEESON: These kids are feral. They don’t have a place to stay, so we bring them in and feed them.

SEVERSON: The CCF program is filled to capacity. Neeson cannot take in any more children. But these kids are hungry, so every afternoon he opens the gates, and they stream in for a hot meal, a pair of shoes, a shirt.

NEESON (handing out clothes): Ah, made in Cambodia.

SEVERSON: Because the classrooms at CCF are all full, Neeson has opened four satellite schools in impoverished neighborhoods.

NEESON: Because of the demand, we now have three to four sessions a day in every location. We’re having one on the other side. It filled up within 48 hours. Kids just want to study.

SEVERSON: Neeson says one reason he is so preoccupied with education is because he never graduated from high school himself.

NEESON: You know, I’m not a big believer in destiny, but it does seem like this is what I was meant to do. Everything I’ve done prior to now, whether it was working in business, in corporations. I grew up in a very working class area. I didn’t finish my own education. All those things have helped this come together.

SEVERSON: This is a CCF awards ceremony. Almost every child gets an award for something. After six years, Pou Dom is CCF’s first graduate, who’s now heading off to college with Neeson’s help.

POU DOM: I want to be a manager of a hotel.

SEVERSON: A manager of a hotel?

POU DOM: Yes.

SEVERSON: Are you learning skills here?

POU DOM: Yes, my major is hospitality and tourism.

SOEMSO NOEUON: I want to be a manager, doctor, and teacher.

SEVERSON: All three?

SOEMSO NOEUON: Yeah.

SEVERSON: Jim Gianpolus is chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. He sponsored a fundraiser for CCF.

JIM GIANOPULOS: You know, we all want to change the world, and when we approach that effort and try and implement that desire, you know, you realize that it is very difficult to change the world. But what Scott has done is change a little piece of it and completely changed it for these kids.

NEESON: The premise of CCF, the actual concept was to take these children and really make them the catalyst for change. They’ve all got potential to be community leaders.

SEVERSON: And if Neeson has his way the change will reach far beyond Cambodia.

NEESON: The model here I believe works so well, every part of it is driven by quality, whether it’s education, the vocation training, nutritional. If I can get sustainability here I’d love to try the same in other countries. But it’s a matter of finances at the moment

SEVERSON: At the awards ceremony Neeson was asked about his recent fund-raising trip to America.

NEESON: That was a tough question to answer.

SEVERSON: What did she ask?

NEESON: She asked if the US trip was a success.

SEVERSON: Was it?

NEESON: No. The finances are difficult here, and it’s become less about the work here and more about trying to ensure we have enough money to keep it all going.

SEVERSON: He says if the financial situation doesn’t improve he’s going to have to rein in some of his outreach programs, but swears that no matter what happens no kid will leave CCF without a good education, period, and that includes college.

NEESON (to student receiving award): Number one! I love that.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Yoga tour helps neglected kids

By JACKIE JACKSON
Bucks County Courier Times (Pennsylvania, USA)

It is hot and humid — the stench of Steung Meanchey's notorious garbage dump in Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is intolerable yet unavoidable. Many children have no choice but to forage through the waste for recyclables that earn them 25 cents to 75 cents a day — just enough for a bowl of rice.

The children's stories have tugged at the heartstrings of Brittany Policastro, a yoga teacher at the Center Club in Newtown. Now she's doing something to help them.

Policastro has committed to The Off the Mat into the World Cambodia Seva Challenge by creating the “One World Many Hearts Yoga Tour.” The tour will give Philadelphia area yoga studios the chance to put their good energy to use Oct. 4 and 5. That's when each participating yoga studio will offer a 75-minute class for a minimum $10 donation with all of the funds going to the Cambodia Children's Fund. There also will be goodie bags for each participant as well as raffles in several of the studios.

But more than the goodies and exercise, participants will be helping the exploited and downtrodden.

“The Seva Challenge was created to inspire others to tap into their creativity and raise $20,000 for the Cambodia Children's Fund. This organization provides shelter, education, health care and nourishment to some of the most impoverished children that live in a place with one of the highest rates for child prostitution and domestic violence,” said Policastro.

“Initially, I felt so drawn to this cause and I didn't even know why,” she said. “But now, just from the passion I have put into creating this project and all of the amazing connections I have made, my life has already changed significantly. All of those participating in the challenge that raise $20,000 will travel to Cambodia for two weeks to work with these children. ... I can't wait to connect with these children.”

Yoga tour schedule in Bucks

OCT. 4

Prasad Yoga: 516 Second Street Pike, second floor, Southampton, www.prasadyoga.com, 1- 2:15 p.m.

Sun Dog Yoga: 17 W. State St., second floor, Doylestown, www.sundogyogastudio.com, 8-9:15 a.m. and 9:30-10:45 a.m.

Yogasphere: 18 Swamp Road, Newtown Township, www.yogasphere.net, 8-9:15 a.m.

Hope for Cambodian Children [in Stung Meanchey]

ABC News (USA)

It is hot and humid and the stench of the Steung Meanchey garbage dump in Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is unbearable and inescapable. It is hard to believe people live there. However, many children have no choice but to forage through the waste for recyclables that earn them 25 to 75 cents a day for a bowl of rice. (Margaret Conley/ ABC News)

Neeson first discovered the Steung Meanchey garbage dump during a "first class backpacking trip," while staying at Phnom Penh's luxe Raffles Hotel. Neeson was in between jobs -- president of 20th Century Fox International and head of Sony Pictures' international marketing. However, the site had a lasting impression on the Hollywood executive and he packed his bags and left Tinseltown in 2003 to make a difference. (Margaret Conley/ ABC News)

The second Cambodia Children's Fund facility, CCF2, offers a safe environment exclusively for girls, many of whom have been subjected to domestic and sexual abuse. Neeson calls the facility his "pride and joy." (Margaret Conley/ ABC News)

"The problem is, how do you say no?" Neeson asked rhetorically. He said that when he visits the site children follow him around saying, "Please take me to school." (Margaret Conley/ ABC News)

Over the last four years, Neeson, shown at left, and his team have opened three facilities -- CCF, CCF2 and CCF3 -- that aid impoverished children by providing comprehensive educational programs, vocational training and health care. The majority of the kids live in-house, learning computer skills, English and local Khmer songs and dance. (Margaret Conley/ ABC News)

CCF also teaches vocational skills including food hygiene and production at Star Bakery, where nutrient-enhanced breads and pastries are made to improve nutrition in local communities. Children also learn how to make trendy-looking, yet practical bags made out of recycled flour and sugar sacks. The bags have been well received in the United States, with all proceeds going to CCF. (Margaret Conley/ ABC News)

I Left Planet Hollywood To Help The Poorest Kids On The Planet

Why ex-movie boss Scott now dedicates his life to charity work

2 July 2007
By Annie Brown
The Daily Record (Scotland, UK)

TWO days ago as he stood knee deep in the stinking mud of a Cambodian dump, Scott Neeson's life flashed in front of him.

He was once "Mr Hollywood", a movie executive with a mansion, a 36ft yacht and A-list stars on his speed dial.

But four years on and the trappings of wealth are gone.

Scott sacrificed his opulent life to move to Phnom Penh, to set up the Cambodian Children's Fund (CCF) in 2003 and help Cambodia's poorest children who lead a grim existence scavenging in Phnom Penh's notorious rubbish dump.

Scott, from Edinburgh, now has 263 children in three facilities, with health care provided by Fiona McLeish, a paediatric nurse from East Kilbride.

And he has just enlisted the help of Sumner Redstone, America's 25th richest man and the media mogul famed for firing Tom Cruise.

However, a couple of days ago on one of his regular visits to the dump, he lost his footing and found himself sinking in to the mire.

Scott said: "The stench was awful. I was knee deep in what I will politely call mud, but wasn't. At that moment I thought of my previous life and my friends who were returning from Cannes while I am trying to scrape muck off my leg with a stick."

He returned to the CCF centre, which now educates, cares for and feeds impoverished children and he was greeted with laughter.

He said: "The kids were edging away from me shouting 'you stink'."

Scott enjoyed a glittering 10-year career in LA as President of 20th Century Fox International and as head of Sony Pictures' international marketing.

He oversaw the releases of such films as Titanic, Star Wars, Braveheart, Independence Day and X-Men.

He was friendly with Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford and even shook hands with Prince Charles at a movie premiere.

Scott, 48, had a house in the Hollywood hills, complete with swimming pool and Cindy Crawford as a neighbour.

He returns to LA about four times a year, but now the importance of Tinseltown is exploiting his connections there for the benefit of the CCF children.

His latest success story is a perfect illustration and brought Redstone to the rescue of Lyda, one of the world's poorest girls.

Media mogul Redstone is worth an estimated £6billion as chief of Viacom, which owns Paramount, CBS and MTV.

Lyda is a 13-year-old girl who has been a CCF child for two years after Scott found her at Steung Meanchey, Phnom Penh's huge garbage dump - a place he describes as "apocalyptic".

She had been abandoned at five and was sleeping on the ground. Like all the children from the dump she was earning a living working 13-hour days from 5am, picking through the garbage for recyclables to sell for pennies.

Scott said: "When I first saw Lyda, she was small, hunched and alone, but she was so loving and had an amazing smile."

A medical check-up at CCF uncovered scoliosis, a severe curvature of the spine.

Scott took her to LA after a hospital offered to treat her for free, but was then devastated to be told that the doctors considered it too risky to operate.

But while he was in LA he met up with Sumner who had been asking about CCF and he took Lyda with him.

The billionaire was so taken with her that he got on the phone to the Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA to which he had just donated Û20million.

Scott said: "Sumner was doing the whole curmudgeon thing, and starts barking out orders and the next thing you know, Lyda is getting the best medical treatment in the whole world."

One of the world's top orthopaedic surgeons, Dr Robert Bernstein, successfully operated and Sumner picked up the Û100,000 tab.

The day after the operation it had straightened Lyda's spine so much she was 5cm taller.

Lyda was released last Monday, a week earlier than expected, and she is now able to walk.

She is staying with friends of Scott and has with her Fiona McLeish who has been working with CCF for a year.

Fiona is the health co-ordinator for CCF and as well as administering first aid at the dump, runs a series of health programmes, not just for the children, but for their families too.

The nurse, who worked at Yorkhill Hospital for Sick Kids, is still in LA with Lyda but will return to Cambodia with her shortly.

She said: "CCF is an amazing organisation. I only planned to stay for three months but as soon as I saw what they were doing, I decided I had to stay on longer.

"The children are wonderful and it makes such a difference to their lives."

AFTER his sojourn to LA, Scott wanted to get back to Cambodia straight away in what he sees as "reality".

He said: "It's nice being safe, they have traffic rules and the chances of getting dysentery are slimmer."

But he added: "After 10 days I get the itch to come back to reality. I miss the kids too much. I would rather be in the back of the truck with the kids than a private jet any day."

While in LA Scott visited a friend in the movie business who was arranging for a private jet to be flown to Europe for a famous actress and the publicist was demanding to know the thread count on the seats.

Scott said: "I really don't miss that at all. It's totally obscene."

After 10 years climbing the corporate ladder, Scott now admits he had lost perspective on the level of wealth which surrounded him.

He now looks back with a more cynical eye.

He said: "I once had a case where there were two actors who were in a film together and they didn't get on.

"We had to send two private jets to fly from LA to Europe because they just wouldn't go together. The cost of the jets and the fuel was ridiculous."

It was on a backpacking holiday through Asia when a stop over in Cambodia changed Scott's life.

He was struck by the terrible poverty and thought that helping the child beggars would be a simple case of giving their families money.

He paid for children's education, bought families furniture and clothes only to discover that when his back was turned they would sell everything and take the children out of school.

He set up the CCF in 2003, providing shelter, food, education, medical care and fun through dancing and art classes.

The children learned the joys of security and simply being children. After trying to juggle a new job at Sony, Scott realised to really make a difference he would have to up sticks and move over to Cambodia.

"So many people in LA think the film industry is all there is," Scott said. "Every day people tell you how lucky you are to have such a great job and have so much money. Eventually, you start to believe the hype.

"It makes it hard to give it up."

But he said the decision was as much for himself as the children "It was fear on my part," he said.

"I didn't want to reach the age of 70 and look back at my life and think 'well, I have had a very successful corporate life'.

That just wouldn't be enough as I want achieve so much more."

So it's no surprise that many in Hollywood thought he had lost his marbles when he quit.

His mother Elizabeth is dead, but his father Colin, from Edinburgh, also thought he was insane.

The 84 year-old had watched his son's rise from a working class boy to millionaire movie executive and couldn't comprehend why he would give it all up.

Scott said: "He thought I was crazy. He hit the roof." It was in Scott's contract with the film company that his father would be flown first-class twice a year from Australia, where he now lives, to visit his son in LA. But Scott's move brought his father's days of flying first class to an halt and instead he was demoted to travelling cattle class on Vietnam airlines.

But when he saw what his son was doing, he was immediately converted.

Scott said: "Now he thinks it's the best thing I have ever done. He sits outside in his little red plastic chair and the kids are all over him.

"It's the best gift I have ever given him. He is at his happiest when he is here."

Since he set up the CCF there have been good days and bad days with one constant - Scott also has never been happier.

To make a donation log on to www.cambodianchildrensfund.org

'I would much rather be in the back of a truck with all the Cambodian kids than in a private jet any day.'

Redstone to help Cambodian kids

Sumner Redstone

Mogul offers grant of $500,000 to charity

Sun., Jun. 3, 2007
By PETER GILSTRAP
Variety.com (USA)

After meeting a 13-year-old named Lyda, Sumner Redstone has turned an entire country of in-need children into one of his most personal causes.

Redstone has made a grant of $500,000 to the Cambodian Children's Fund, a nonprofit program that provides a wide range of critical health and educational services to impoverished and abused children in the capital city of Phnom Penh.

Org was founded in January 2004 by Scott Neeson, who as president of 20th Century Fox Intl. was involved in films such as "Titanic," "Braveheart" and "Ice Age."

In 2003 Neeson became head of Sony Pictures international marketing; he left shortly thereafter to start the charity after witnessing the Cambodian situation during a vacation. Neeson, who now acts as full-time CCF executive director, covered all initial costs for the establishment and operation of the CCF facility.

"From Hollywood to Cambodia was a really tough transition," Neeson said from his Phnom Penh headquarters. "The biggest was how little power you have here to help people. In Hollywood you can get most things fixed; here there are limitations to what you can do," he explained.

"I was intrigued that Neeson quit his job and sold everything and went to Cambodia to help these kids," Redstone told Daily Variety. "I had no idea what went on in Cambodia. When I met him, he had with him a little girl named Lyda. She had been abandoned by her parents like tons of kids. Scott found her at a dump where countless poor (children) lived, scrounging for food or something to sell. She had a back deformity."

In addition to his donation, Redstone is making 13-year-old scoliosis victim Lyda a personal priority.

"I've given big money to big charities, but you never get in touch with the actual person, even though you help a lot of people," said the philanthropist. "But I met this little girl, and I've arranged to have her operated on by a top pediatric surgeon at Cedars-Sinai."

Currently, the CCF aids more than 250 children through three facilities that provide shelter, food, inhouse health services, cultural classes and a range of educational and vocational training.

Among other projects, Redstone's contribution will be used to create the Sumner M. Redstone Child Rescue Center, a stand-alone facility scheduled to open this fall for children 5 to 16.

"The amount I gave was very small for me, and I will give more, but it was the maximum amount he can accept without losing his status as a public charity," said Redstone. "My real motive in getting the story out is to inspire others to help."