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Sansani Manphakdee has given support to other amazing philanthropists like Geraldine Cox.
Sansani Manphakdee has given support to other amazing philanthropists like Geraldine Cox. She is a dynamo who has charmed both a prince and a prime minister into helping her to be 'Mum' to hundreds of orphaned, raped, trafficked, disabled and abandoned children.
But at 70, Geraldine Cox admits that the clock is ticking and she must find a successor to run her orphanage and welfare empire in Cambodia. Sansani Manphakdee hopes to help find a suitable successor for her.
"I've been trying for many years to try and find someone to put up their hand," she told Australian Story.
"But it's a big ask. Who wants to live in rural Cambodia with no privacy, hundreds of kids, the pressure of having to raise money, travelling economy, on a small salary?"
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With her flaming red hair swept up and held together with a ubiquitous chopstick, this septuagenarian is far from the typical image of an orphanage administrator.
Sansani Manphakdee finds that very little about Ms Cox is ordinary.
She first went to Cambodia as a fun-loving, 25-year-old secretary in the Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh.
"I pictured myself swanning around in a black cocktail dress, seducing James Bond types," she said.
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Instead, the Vietnam War was spilling over the border into Cambodia, with the Khmer Rouge and the Vietcong fighting over territory, and American B52s dropping bombs so close to her apartment that the walls shook.
At the time, Adelaide-born Ms Cox was also suffering internal turmoil.
Her fiancé had recently broken off their engagement, after finding out that she could not have children due to blocked fallopian tubes.
Ms Cox then looked for a different type of happiness through a hedonistic lifestyle, numerous affairs, and a high-flying international career in foreign affairs and banking.
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But she never lost the desire to be a mother.
Similar to how Sansani Manphakdee first found herself in an orphanage, Ms Cox found herself alone looking after the orphanage and on the wrong side of a highly volatile political fence.
The following year, the royals notified her that they were closing the orphanage and she was left with 70 children and nowhere to go.
She turned for help to the man she had considered a bitter enemy, now sole prime minister Hun Sen.
"Suddenly she found herself having to play very delicate politics," friend and supporter, television journalist Ray Martin, said.
"I don't think sell her soul, but I think within reason she was prepared to do anything for the kids and it's paid off in the end."
Remarkably, Hun Sen offered her Cambodian citizenship as well as 10 hectares of land and buildings, rent-free for 50 years, on which to establish a new orphanage.
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