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Cambodia's Orphan Business
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Cambodia's Orphan Business

25 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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Cambodia draws more than two million tourists a year, and many arrive wanting to help by volunteering at orphanages. Al Jazeera's People & Power team investigates what that impulse has built: a residential care industry that has more than doubled in a decade, housing an estimated 10,000 children, over 70 percent of whom have at least one living parent. Interviews with aid workers, researchers, and families trace how poverty and the promise of a Western-style education persuade parents to hand children over to homes marketed toward foreign donors and volunteers. Some operators are shown running orphanages as businesses, keeping children visibly needy to sustain donations rather than working to reunite them with relatives. The film sets this against research linking institutional care to long-term psychological harm, and asks why volunteer tourism keeps expanding a system built on separating kids from parents who are still alive. It closes on the mismatch between good intentions and the incentives they end up funding.