There are moments-when I wish my house was bigger or I look in my wardrobe and can’t find anything to wear – I suddenly get a flash of memory that takes my breath away.

In that second, I’m back in Cambodia, with  a family living in a one room, ramshackle  hut  with gaping holes in the walls.

It’s steaming hot and they have little to eat and few possessions- some threadbare clothes, an old fan and a cooking stove.

I’m interviewing them about  their lives to write a profile on their son to help him  find a sponsor through the school where I’m volunteering for six weeks.

I first visited the school, Feeding Dreams Cambodia, at the start of 2013, and was so affected by that experience that I returned in 2014 to help out with English classes.

The school, catering then for more than 500 students at the time (more than 800 now), was set up to provide a free education to some of the more impoverished children living in the ‘pocket slums’ of Siem Reap.

The town is the jumping off point to the world-renowned Angkor Wat temple and while hordes of tourists bring busloads of money through the town, many locals  live lives  of unseen poverty.

Students ride their rusty bikes through the heat each day to the free classes in English, craft and maths they hope will deliver  a brighter future in a town dominated by English-speaking tourists.

While the kids seemed happy and reasonably dressed, stories emerged revealing how brutal life in Cambodia could be.

One of the fathers at the school had sold his daughter to an orphanage for $20, reportedly to buy rice wine.

Others gambled away their family’s meagre savings, took off with other woman or had been on the receiving end of acid attacks that left their faces almost unrecognisable.

The kids lived in  circumstances that would make most Australians shudder – cramped into hot, crowded huts with a lack of decent food, and no toilet, shower or medical facilities.

During my first visit I decided to sponsor a boy called San, who I knew through the school.

He was all smiles, but always wore the same shirt and often looked dirty and a little sad as he headed home.

His parents loved him but lacked time to care for him.

His dad earned 50 cents a day  at the local market  while his mum made $2 a day cleaning clothes which made paying their $10 monthly rent and buying food big worries.

tip dwellers near Siem Reap

A early in 2014  I caught up with San again.

It was steaming hot, and a little boy in one of the neighbouring huts was lying listlessly in his mum’s arms with fluid on the brain that was too advanced to treat  even if the necessary cash could be found.

He had no future because he was born in Cambodia without the means for medical care and where doctors are in short supply.

San then had been missing school because his mother was in hospital but I recently learned that things had turned and  and he’d finished second in class.

Next year he aims to be number one.

I feel a strange affection for this little chap I don’t know very well at all, and I have to admire his plucky attitude in the face of some pretty tough living conditions.

I  think of him a lot at this time of the year.

The disparity between his world and mine becomes stark  in the season for eating prawns, guzzling sparkling wine and exchanging perfectly-wrapped presents.

Some argue that ‘voluntourism’ is detrimental to developing countries; that countries need to drag themselves up by their own bootstraps by building better economies.

It’s an easy argument to have from the comfort of our couches, but in the meantime, what happens to families like San’s?

I reckon that this Christmas, whatever your view, you’d do worse than to try and help someone doing it tough, either overseas or closer to home.

Why not buy a smaller turkey, set a price limit on your presents or skip the Christmas crackers to free up a few dollars?

At this time of grand excess, it’s all too easy to forget that we’re among the luckiest people on earth.

A version of this story was first published on Hey, Little Spender! Profits from this story will be donated to Feeding Dreams Cambodia.