Jimmy Pham was born in Vietnam in 1972 and moved to Australia as a young child with his mother and siblings where he grew up in Sydney. He was interested in tourism and travel and so he studied hospitality at school. In 1996 he went back to Vietnam for the first time, on a temporary assignment as a tour operator.

One night, Jimmy Pham went for a walk in Saigon and met some street kids. He noticed how dirty they were. They had blisters on their legs. He asked them: ‘where do you shower?’ And they said: ‘we shower next to an open sewer’. The next day, he organised for that small group to have a proper wash. By the time he left Vietnam two weeks later word of his generosity had spread and he was paying for 60 young people to wash and eat.

The concept of KOTO began when Jimmy asked some of these young people what they wanted out of life. They simply replied, ‘We need skills so we can find stable jobs’. He then decided that he wanted to come back to Vietnam on a long-term basis and make a difference. He didn't know how he was going to do it, he just knew that he wanted to help.