Tara Winkler was just 19 when she set off on the trip to Cambodia that would change her life.

After coming across an orphanage where funds were embezzled and young girls sexually abused, she set up her own orphanage in the city of Battambang in 2007.

Seven years later, the organisation she created is no longer an orphanage but a community development organisation offering help to poor families and more than 100 children each day.

Tara Winkler is no longer 'mum' to the kids.

But in the four years since she was first profiled on Australian Story, she has faced dramas in her professional and personal life that nobody could have predicted.

The story is introduced by fashion designer Jodhi Meares, a supporter of Tara Winkler's Cambodian Children's Trust.