The NI owner of a cosmetics company which is known worldwide has been helping kids and families in Asia.
Brendan McDowell, from Co Down, founder of BPerfect Cosmetics, is currently working with charity Feeding Dreams Cambodia in Siem Reap's slums.
It's a community school offering free education, school meals and support to over 800 children and families.
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After ten years of hard work, the entrepreneur is now using his personal time to give back.
Brendan, who has been in Cambodia for the past week with no return flight booked home yet, told Be: "This year, I wanted to take on a new manager in the company, so I've taken on a new managing director in BPerfect because I've been working 24/7 for the last ten years.
"I just wanted to take some pressure off and I feel like after ten years of giving everything to the business and doing quite well, that I wanted to spend some of my personal time giving back and looking into world needs.
"One of the big things we are going to be working on this year is sustainability with our products and packaging.
"Another thing that was close to my heart was poverty with kids globally. I was going travelling to Japan and Thailand and a friend of mine, Clare McKinney, and Arlene Gormley have been involved in Feeding Dreams for years... Arlene [who is from Belfast] helped set the charity up many years ago.
"I decided to come over and see what it was like and see if there's stuff we could be doing to partner with the charity this year and make some sort of positive impact globally with child poverty."
Brendan said he has found the experience "really moving" so far.
He explained: "The first day I went in, all the kids sung assembly, then I went in and I was teaching in the classes, helping them learn some English and I also taught them to say 'ats us nai' - some Belfast slang.
"I've been asking more at the business level of the charity how I can get involved with sponsorship and how I can get involved more in helping market the charity, helping them to make more awareness."
The businessman added: "It was all very positive.
"I've never seen kids with bigger smiles on their face in my entire life, they are just so happy to go to school.
"They have really good English lessons, they get a good meal and there's kindergarten right up to teenagers coming in, learning cooking, tourism training...."
Brendan said his time helping out in Cambodia on Wednesday was one of the more "hard-hitting days" as he was taken to see where some of the kids live.
"I was in the slums and got to see the kids in their homes. It was scary to see where they live, there's a lot of flooding and when it floods, what happens is a lot of contamination from sewage goes through the slums.
"There was one wee girl who had been injured five days ago and had been lying in a bed for five days. The charity went down and advised the family to get her to the doctor," the BPerfect owner explained.
Brendan highlighted the 'lack of food, lack of education and lack of funding' - and found it "really emotional".
"[Some kids] had a lot of damage in their skin, they had damage in their arms and their bones and that's through malnutrition and from flooding."
He added: "The kids just came running over and the first thing they do is high-five you and fist bump.
"It was really welcoming.
"The families really love seeing the charity coming down with western people because they know what a positive impact it has on their community."
The business owner told of the positive impact Feeding Dreams has on the community.
"There's some teenagers that have been through the school over the last ten years who go on and get better jobs in the tourism world.
"There was a business there selling bamboo juice and it was through Feeding Dreams that they helped get this business up and running, he said.
Brendan has found the past week "extremely rewarding" and wants to use his platform in a positive way.
"The overall picture for me as a business owner is to try to use my platform, like Instagram, to try to highlight to people that things seems bad at home, but whenever you come over to somewhere here that is suffering really bad poverty, you can see that it's just on a complete different level.
"I think we are kind of guilty of living sometimes in the western bubble..." he said.
To find out more about Feeding Dreams Cambodia, CLICK HERE.
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