“Shiloh and Zahara and their family are very good people. We have known them for a while, they sponsor us.” Angelina Jolie’s daughters Shiloh and Zahara are following in her charitable footsteps by sponsoring a family of Cambodian slum children.

The Hollywood star’s eldest daughters may live in the lap of luxury but have formed a bond with some of the poorest children while in South East Asia as their mother makes her latest movie, First They Killed my Father.

Leida Shoun, 16, who has twelve brothers and sisters, initially approached Shiloh, nine, and Zahara, 10, when they and father Brad Pitt stopped for ice cream in the town of Siem Reap, and they were so moved by her family’s plight they are now sponsoring them.

On separate occasions the two girls took the kids out and treated them to new sets of clothes totalling $200, a small fortune in a country where a T-shirt costs less than a dollar – trips to a games arcade and two brand new bikes. Speaking with the permission of her father, Mansaret, 40, Leida told us: “We only had one bicycle for the entire family and it was old, so for us this is an amazing gift.

“I play with Shiloh or Zahara, they meet us in Siem Reap town and we all play together.

“They take us to the arcade in the Angkor Centre, they are all very nice people. I like it when we play ball.”

Leida and her siblings aged between 23 and 16 months live in a small tin shack in the slum district of Mundal Bai in Siem Reap with their mother and father. Although they live in the shadow of the temples at World Heritage site Angkor Wat, the family are ignored by the thousands of tourists from around the world who stream in each day. Trash is strewn across the clandestine dirt road, which has no house numbers and beer adverts can be seen hanging from shops while a number of “Karaoke” bars , Cambodian shorthand for brothels line the bottom end of the street.

Water is provided by a small hand pump and the family also collect rainwater in a stone tub outside their four-room house to wash in. — Dailymail

You Might Also Like

Comments