SCOTT NEESON – 2021 HUMANITARIAN AWARD RECIPIENT
In 2019 the Society of Australian Cinema Pioneers instituted a Humanitarian Award to recognise outstanding and exceptional service to the cinema industry and/or the wider community by a member of the Society. This service might be for charity work, mentoring, community service or any other activities of merit. The award is not necessarily made every year, and only when there is an outstanding candidate. Previous recipients have been Murray Forrest and Tom Jeffrey.
This year’s recipient of the Australian Cinema Pioneer Humanitarian Award is Cinema Pioneer Scott Neeson the Founder and Executive Director of Cambodian Children’s Fund.
Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. At age 5, he migrated to South Australia with his family. At the age of 16 Scott left high school and found employment with a local cinema chain, Clifford Theatres, which ran a number of Cinemas and Drive-ins in Adelaide.
He subsequently moved to Sydney working for GUO and then Hoyts. In 1987 he was appointed managing director of the joint distribution arm of Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Hoyts Distribution.
Scott accepted an offer to move to Los Angeles in 1993 to take up the role of Vice President of International Marketing with 20th Century Fox and ultimately as President of 20th Century Fox International.
During a vacation in South East Asia in 2003 Scott stopped over in Cambodia.
While there he visited the Phnom Penh sprawling municipal dump. Here met some of the hundreds of children and their families who lived and scavenged on the tip. Deeply moved by their plight, on his return to the US he made plans to change their lives and circumstances.
In early 2004, using his own funds he established Cambodian Children’s Fund and then in December 2004 he left Los Angeles and relocated permanently to Phnom Penh to manage the organisation.
“’The Cambodian Children’s Fund mission is to transform the country’s most impoverished children into tomorrow’s leaders, by delivering education, family support and community development programs into the heart of Cambodia’s most impoverished communities”.
In 2016, the Variety International Children’s Fund named Scott as the recipient of its annual Humanitarian Award.
In 2007, Quincy Jones awarded CCF founder Scott Neeson the inaugural Harvard School of Public Health “Q Prize” in recognition of his “extraordinary leadership in advocacy for children” through CCF.
To quote the Dalai Lama: “He sacrificed his comfortable life in America, so he could spend more time in Cambodia with the poor people there”.
https://www.cambodianchildrensfund.org/our-mission