The grassroots NGO PEPY (Protect the Earth Protect Yourself) built a school for 540 children in rural Cambodia and financially sustains this project by offering volunteer vacations to the school. Since the first PEPY School opened in 2005, over 100 volunteers from 14 different countries joined the weeklong trips and worked with the students on educational, environmental and building projects. Their trips include visits to non-profit organizations that are affiliated with PEPY, where the volunteers learn about Cambodia and meet the development workers who seek to help the country recover from Pol Pot’s regime and its aftermath, each in their own unique way.

One dedicated social entrepreneur is PEPY’s 27 year-old president and co-founder Daniela Papi, a passionate young woman who believes that access to education will provide a better future for Cambodia’s children. The film follows Daniela’s personal journey from her first visit to the PEPY School in December 2005 until January 2007 as she leads three volunteer trips to the school and expands her NGO into a Volun-tour-operator. During this time, PEPY’s 26 year-old co-founder Greta Arnquist decides to step down as vice-president — and Daniela — left with the responsibility of supporting 540 children — struggles to find the right approach to make her mission sustainable and discovers what personal sacrifice this takes.

Joining Daniela on expeditions into the villages and to meetings with teachers, students and parents, allows the audience to share her experience of running a grassroots NGO, of better understanding the conditions and way of life in rural Cambodia and of identifying the real needs of its children. Trying to implement resultant environmental and educational projects at the school, Daniela and her team face the problems of sustainability in development work that is challenged by insufficient research, disloyal allegiances, corruption and cultural differences.

Following the stories of four students over the course of one year and gaining the villagers’ perspective on the impact of PEPY’s presence, measures the realistic potential of the NGO’s objectives for the local community. Seasoned international aid workers further evaluate PEPY’s undertaking as they critically assess the personal, practical and political challenges of volunteer work, the problematic reputation of charities and the methods employed by NGO’s for sustainable development.

back to top

Daniela Papi
Economics graduate and consultant who left the business world behind. After becoming a field hockey teacher, a skiing instructor, an English teacher in Japan and a trip leader for Habitat for Humanity she decided to make development her career. She co-founded the NGO PEPY to increase access to education to children across the third world and together with Greta Arnquist built the first PEPY School through grassroots fundraising efforts in one year. She currently lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Greta Arnquist
Anthropology graduate, choir singer, and adventure traveller who is passionate about saving the environment. She led trips for various NGO’s while teaching English in Japan until volunteering at the Future Light Orphanage in Cambodia and felt compelled to do more. She was co-founder and vice-president of PEPY until March 2006.

Scott Neeson
Former head of 20th Century Fox in Hollywood who radically changed his life and founded the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF). His orphanage shelters and educates 120 children, rescuing them from a garbage dump in Stang Man Chay, Cambodia.

Mickey Sampson
PhD in Inorganic Chemistry and Country Director of RDI (Resource Development International). He moved to Cambodia in 1998 with his family, where he researches water-born diseases in his self-built laboratory and produces water filters for schools and rural communities that provide safe drinking water. The PEPY volunteers visit Mickey’s project and learn about solving
Cambodia’s poisoned ground water crisis.

Christina Heyniger
Volun-tourism Consultant and founder of XOLA. Her company assesses the economic, social and political impact of the travel industry as partner for environmental and sustainable development.

Andrew Butler
Volunteer recruiter for Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) stationed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Oresa Sritapra
Former Peace Corps volunteer and director for Cross Cultural
Solutions (CCS) in Bangkok, Thailand.

Abbah Singh
Head of JAGORI (Women’s Training, Documentation and Communication Centre) in Dharamsala, India.

Sopath Kim
Born in rural Cambodia, his family lives across the road from the PEPY School. He is one of the three people who left their village and found work in Siem Reap, Cambodia. He assists PEPY as a translator during the volunteer trips.

back to top

Former US vice president Al Gore campaigns for awareness about the climate change crisis, stressing the significance of grassroots initiatives and each individual’s potential to be an activist for change. With ‘Live Earth’ concerts, that propagated this exact spirit, popular culture set out to re-politicize today’s youth with the by-line: “Don’t rely on politicians to make changes. Do it yourself”!

Accentuating this revolution and subverting its theoretical fortune to its practical possibilities and consequences, this film shows how change is brought about, what it takes to sustain it and how it snowballs into producing unforeseeable effects. It challenges the critical reputation of aid work through imperative transparency and will allow citizens and policymakers to perceive the complexity of sustainable development, re-think their own responsibilities and individual potential to ‘make a difference’ and help reformulate more effective strategies for lasting social and environmental changes in the future.

We are familiar with campaigns by established organizations like the UN, the World Bank, U.S.AID or celebrity endorsed projects (Angelina Jolie, Bill Clinton) that have ever-increasing current affairs status. These familiar promotional efforts tell us nothing about the different agendas of the individuals involved, who dedicate themselves to the cause of helping others — nothing about their everyday struggles over time, nothing about the divergent effects of their work for the local communities and themselves, and nothing about the personal, social and political potholes that stand in the way of doing aid work responsibly. This documentary will.

There are 1,500 charities currently working in Cambodia. They are vital for the economic survival of the country and often operate competitively for its humanitarian, environmental and political recovery. This specific accumulation of aid allows the film to offer a look inside the non-profit world, documenting its achievements, fiascos and problematic methods of approach that bare global significance for humanitarian aid practices and currently escalating Volun-tourism projects.

“Gap-year volunteers hinder foreign aid work- According to Voluntary Service Overseas, voluntourism, in which gap year kids pay thousands to take part in spurious projects, is not only not helping, but in some cases hindering aid projects in developing countries.” (August 14th 2007 Press Release – The Times p.1,2, Indy p.11, Guardian p.9, Telegraph p.8, Mail p.17) The debate about Volun-tourism becomes the focus of current news media. This film accentuates, extends and contests opinions in this discussion through an insiders chronicle and first hand accounts.

After 1.7 million deaths and nearly 30 years, the first of Pol Pot’s henchmen is charged with crimes against humanity” (The Independent, Cover Stoiy - August 1st, 2007). The UN-backed trials to prosecute the former Khmer Rouge leaders will bring Cambodia to a peak of mass media attention. Now is the time for this documentaiy to give an intimate and carefully conducted insight into the present life of rural communities in the country as it shifts into the public light.


back to top