Where Am I Giving: A Global Adventure Exploring How to Use Your Gifts and Talents to Make a Difference

IntroductionThe Trash Picker, the Slave, and the Garment Maker (The World, 2001–2018)

One of the most beautiful sights I've seen is an 11-year-old girl laughing in the worst place I've ever been.

She haunts me to this day.

Smoke and stench – fire and brimstone – surrounded her as she threw her head back, shoulders shaking. Her eyes closed to the hellscape of Phnom Penh's municipal dump. She had been sifting through previously picked-through trash looking for something of value. Treasure or trash? Discard or keep?

She and the other children earned a dollar per day, if they were lucky, by selling their findings while their parents picked through fresh trash brought by a parade of garbage trucks. Most of the trash pickers were former farmers.

What must have life been like back on the farm?

“Life in our village is tough,” I imagined the parents saying. “Farming is no way to make a living. I hear there's this garbage heap in the city where we could work and even the kids could earn a dollar per day.”

They packed up their belongings and moved to the city. My hell on earth was someone else's opportunity.

That thought coupled with the sight and the smell of the dump made me physically ill. I had to fight from puking. I didn't want them to see that what they did and where they did it disgusted me.

Until visiting the dump, I didn't realize that people lived in places like this.

The adults wore rags across their noses and mouths, their vacant, almost lifeless eyes searching through the ...