The 2015 Creative Sageing Award for service/ministry which the minster or partner has done since retirement was given to the Rev. Frederick Lipp. The citation, read at the UURMaPA luncheon at General Assembly by Jim Hobart (who nominated him) is as follows:
“…Following his retirement from the parish ministry, in 1998 Fred published his first children’s book, That Cat is Not for Sale, a true story of a cat who lived in Gillingham’s General Store in Vermont. In 2000, Fred published The Caged Birds of Phnom Penh. It soon garnered a number of prizes, including “notable book for a Global Society” from the International Reading Association, the Silver Horn from Parent’s Choice, and the Amelia Bloom award for feminist literature from the American Library Association. In 2005 the book was distributed by the French publisher SIPAR to all children in Cambodia in the Khmer language.
However, this gets me ahead of Fred Lipp’s story.
In 2001, during a visit to Cambodia, Fred saw the deplorable circumstances of Cambodian girls in the provinces. They received only rudimentary education before going to work in the fields and/or getting married. Fred was profoundly moved by this deeply ingrained Cambodian practice. In typical Fred fashion, he said to himself , “I’ve got to do something about this.” And so he did. The “something” was to found the Cambodian Arts and Scholarship Foundation (CASF).
In 2001, CASF funded three girls to continue their educations, providing tuition, housing, meals, transportation and stipends to their families, and in addition, support services for the girls to make this transition. Staff were hired in Cambodia. Fred and others in the US volunteered their time, including offering their financial support and soliciting support from others.
The foundation motto is “Change the world one girl at a time.” Since 2001, over 300 students have participated in the CASF educational program. In 2015, over 60 graduates of the program have completed university educations and are working as doctors, lawyers, accountants, NGO leaders and in other professions. Currently there are 65 students in the CASF program, 6th grade through university.
A student can be educated through high school for $250 a year. A year at the university costs $1500. The total budget of the foundation is only $100,000. If anyone wants more information or would like to make a contribution, details can be found at: www.cambodianscholarship.org.
The CASF achievement has often involved hardships and sometimes has been a dangerous road for Fred and Kitty Lipp, his partner and wife, who provides strong support and active engagement in the CASF program.
In addition to his volunteer work for CASF, Fred continues to write children’s stories. There are now nine stories about girls and boys in several Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Their titles are: Running Shoes, Chalk, End of the Road, Bread Song, Tea Leaves, Clay Truck (also distributed to all children in Cambodia) and Fatima. These books have been variously published in English, French, Khmer, Catalan, Korean, and Portuguese.
When I informed him of the honor, Fred responded, “You caught me off-guard, so the honor kind of took words away. We do what we are called to do over the years, and I am probably the one most surprised, learning that we never really retire as we are involved with family, inner landscapes, and the world. This is the really, really big surprise!”