In 2002, Marisa Caprile and her family met Papy et Mamie during the annual tour in Toulouse. Since that day, Marisa has found herself linked to PSE. "It was overwhelming. I remember the image of a child picking up needles from a heap of garbage. From that moment on, I couldn't stop crying until the end of the video. I imagined myself with my children on the dump, and I was completely transported!".
After the film, Papy and Mamie asked for help with the summer camps. In fact, 1/3 of the children didn't return to PSE after the summer vacations. It was becoming urgent to organize activities during this month to ensure continuity of programs and limit school drop-out. In 2000, a priest friend of Papy et Mamie initiated the very first summer camps in Cambodia, but was later forced to return to France.
"At the end of the video, I went to see Papy and Mamie with my eldest daughter, who was 16. I told them I was available during the summer to help out at camps if needed. I didn't hear from them again until May 2003, when I got a call asking me to help out with the camps in July." No longer sure she could do it, as the camps were coming up very soon, Marisa called on her husband Fernando and her 3 children (Pedro, Pablo and Alexandra, aged 12, 13 and 16 at the time), who told her: "Let's get into this adventure together".
Thanks to them, the camps started up again in 2003. They started from zero, with only a photo from the first camp in 2000 of a child playing with a soccer ball. That year, 19 European and 20 Khmer monitors were mobilized to look after 250 PSE children for 1 month. In 2019, these numbers have almost all been multiplied by 10, with 250 European monitors and 300 Khmer monitors, taking care of 3,300 children every day.