How a holiday in Cambodia changed our lives'

The world's problems often feel too big and overwhelming to tackle. Yet the Palti family 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, 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.

Jessica: So we went back five more times between 2009 and 2011. I hadn't been able to join the first trip, but I was there for all the others and became really passionate about our commitment to help these kids. Then we started thinking, how can we create even more impact – even more education and empowerment – and do it in such a way that we'll know exactly where the money is going? We knew that whatever we did had to be sustainable in order to bring real change. In 2011, we started our own organisation, the Cambodia Rural Students Trust (CRST).