Our story 'How a holiday in Cambodia changed our lives'

The world’s problems often feel too big and overwhelming to tackle. Yet the Palti family from Melbourne found that taking small steps can make a real difference.

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Steph: I was 14 years old and the school was running a Year Nine volunteer trip to Cambodia. I was so excited about it, but I was struggling with the paperwork and ended up handing it in a few days late. The teacher organising the trip took me aside and said: “In life, if you don’t get your paperwork in on time, you miss out.” They were trying to teach me a lesson, but I was so disappointed. I went home that night and my family were sad for me, too. We had a discussion around the dinner table about why the trip was so important to me — about how I wanted to make a change and help people. And then it occurred to us: Why don’t we organise our own family volunteer trip?

I hopped onto Google, typed in “14-year-old volunteer in Cambodia” and all these websites came up. Finding the best place to volunteer became my project. Eventually,

I found a school in a little village outside the town of Siem Reap, and six weeks later, we were there as volunteer teachers. My older sister, Jessica, was in her VCE year, so she couldn’t come, but I went with Mum and Dad, one of my cousins and my grandmother.

We taught English every morning from 6am, and all the kids were so eager to learn, but we found out that a lot of them weren’t eating very much at home. So we started to bring in snacks and prizes.

Michelle (Steph’s mum): That first trip was a real eyeopener. We came back feeling very humble.