Looming over one of the most impoverished communities in Phnom Penh is what looks like a large grass-covered hill.
On closer inspection, it's a mountain of garbage, the legacy of the infamous and now closed Stung Meanchey rubbish dump.
This is where Granny Leng Rin ended up scavenging for scraps to earn a living after the brutal killing of her husband, parents, siblings and two of her children during the Pol Pot regime.
In the late 1970s, the Cambodian government, led by the Khmer Rouge, systematically murdered up to 3 million people in an attempt to create a classless agricultural society.
Left to take care of her family alone, Granny Rin turned to garbage picking.
But the income was barely enough for Granny Rin's family to survive and she lived on the brink of poverty for years — until she found a charity that offered to help.
"My first feeling was that I am so poor and if I join the Cambodian Children's Fund, I don't have any money to pay so how can I live with CCF?" she told the ABC.
"So I ask people around and other grannies, 'do you pay anything when you live with CCF?' and they responded 'No, they cover all the cost". I felt grateful after hearing that."
Granny Rin is now the unofficial matriarch of the Girls to Grannies Village – a women's only community set up by the charity in the shadow of the garbage mountain.
"We are grateful to be here. I always tell the children that we don't have anything to pay back for this kindness so just study hard and get higher education is what you should do."
The village is home to about 200 single mothers and their children, as well as grannies like Leng Rin who foster them.
It features a library, classroom, communal gardens, pagoda and most importantly, no men.
A first of its kind in Asia, the girls and women who live here say it has changed their lives.
Drugs, gangsters and harassment a daily reality in Phnom Penh
Fifteen-year-old Nhev Srenoiy moved to the village with her two sisters two years ago, after one of them got harassed when she was in a public bathroom.
"We moved here because it's a safe place for us to live," she told the ABC.
"We are girls and we live with only girls."
The village is not far from the Neeson Cripps Academy where Nhev Srenoiy is a diligent student.
"After I finish my school, I want to be a software engineer," she said.
"I like coding so I want to be a software engineer."
Just a few houses up, fellow resident Kimly Chuon said moving to the village changed her life and helped her fulfil her dream of studying civil engineering.
"[Outside the village] it's really bad because there's a lot of gangsters, a lot of people that sell drugs," she said.
"And it's really scary, especially when I had to leave school late at night I was really scared to walk home."
She said the village has given her a safe and secure place to focus on her studies in peace.
"But when I moved here, I feel like it's OK, like the environment is safe enough for me to walk from school to home and walk going back and forth," she said.
"There's a lot of violence happening around in the community and we are really vulnerable as a girl, so we don't really have any power to defend ourselves, so it's really good to have a group of girls living together."
The high-flying executive who gave it all away
Despite being tailored to women and girls, the all-female village was actually the brainchild of a man.
Former Australian film executive Scott Neeson worked in Hollywood for 26 years before a chance encounter with an eight-year-old girl living at the Stung Meanchey garbage dump who wanted to go to school.
That experience spurred him to sell his Porsche, yacht and home and start the Cambodian Children's Fund, an Australian NGO providing education for thousands of children.
"I'd done very well for myself, and it wasn't that I hated Hollywood. I had a great time there. I was a local boy made good and had all the trappings and good salary but this was really striking," he told the ABC.
The Girls to Grannies village is his latest venture and there's hope it could provide a model for other developing countries.
"The girls aren't nearly as safe as it's a very hostile community out there," he said.
"A lot of the times there's no father at home. In fact, 90 per cent of the homes there's no father there."
Scott said violence and abuse is an issue for Cambodian girls and women, many of whom want a safer place to stay.
"It provides the girls — school age girls, through to young women — with a safe place to study and it provides the grannies with a safe place for their foster children," he said.
"The girls are also very ambitious in their studies. They often don't have a safe place to study after hours. They don't have a safe home environment. They feel more at risk than the boys do, and many of them just wanted a safe place to study."
He says he's been amazed by the outcomes since the village opened in late 2020.
"The thing that inspires me the most is the education results we have," he said.
"Eighty per cent of the girls and young women go from primary school into university. In one year, we had 100 per cent transitioning and this year, we're going to have around about 85 students going into university so it's worked wonders."
The charity also provides free meals, free healthcare and education.
Scott Neeson says what the future holds for the girls is entirely up to them.
"When they see their own potential, there's no stopping them."
