By Alan Burke Staff Writer The Salem News
Wed Jan 26, 2011,
MARBLEHEAD — It sounds like a moment from a Hollywood movie.
A Unitarian minister writes a book, "The Caged Birds of Phnom Penh," about Cambodian girls hungering for learning but denied an education. He also starts the Cambodian Arts and Scholarship Foundation to help such girls because it doesn't take much — as little as $15 a month — to allow a poor kid to go to school in Cambodia.
On a trip to Cambodia last January, the minister brought along a friend, Lisa Watkins, 46, of Marblehead. And when he visited a poor village, he tried to tell the people the purpose of his foundation. Some might not have understood. There was a language barrier. And a few didn't know why girls would want to go to school in the first place.
But the minister, Fred Lipp, had a way of getting their attention and making them see a life of previously undreamed-of possibilities.
"Now," he said suddenly, "Lisa will sing."
The first time he said it, a bit abruptly, was as much a surprise to Watkins as it was to the Cambodians. But she came forward and began, putting her classically trained voice to Rodgers and Hammerstein, singing in the open air, "Oh, what a beautiful morning, Oh, what a beautiful day," and the sound transfixed the startled villagers.
And maybe some of them stopped to think, well, "Suppose my daughter was educated?"
"It was an incredible experience," Watkins wrote later, "to connect with the girls, their families and their villages on a level that required no specific language except music." In a later interview, she explained, "Music has a way of connecting without words."
Watkins came a long way to that village, from an upbringing on Long Island, to Boston University, and then a career that went from jazz clubs and cabarets to Wall Street.
Married 10 years ago, by none other than Fred Lipp, she and her husband, Dan, live in Marblehead with their two boys, ages 8 and 9. Her passions include music and the Cambodian Arts and Scholarship Foundation, where she is an adviser.
Her involvement with the Cambodian charity goes back to its founding nearly 10 years ago. At the time, she was living in London and became friendly with Lipp, a visiting minister from his church in Maine. Work in finance left the Watkinses financially secure.
"I had a corporate career for 18 years," she said.
When Watkins returned to America about six years ago, she decided to resume her interest in music.
"I started singing with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus," she said of an organization that's linked to and performs with both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, where she has sung under the batons of music stars like Michael Tilson Thomas and Keith Lockhart.
Watkins' visit to Cambodia, a country still recovering from the ravages of the murderous Khmer Rouge, was her first.
"It's heartbreaking to hear that a girl can't go to school because she doesn't have a $13 uniform," Watkins said.
She hopes to impress on her own children a lesson about the world, "to show my kids that how we live is not the norm," she said.
The idea that her kids would not have the right to go to school is unthinkable. Yet, in Cambodia, girls are almost an afterthought, especially when it comes to education. And, in some of the worst cases, those who fail to learn can be lured or forced into human trafficking schemes.
By contrast, Watkins said, 92 percent of the girls who are helped by the foundation get good jobs.
"I can't tell you how great it is to think you make a small difference," she said. "Another way to phrase it — I do small things, and they make a big difference to someone."
Her trip included a stop at Angkor Wat, the fabulous temple complex that symbolizes Cambodia.
"It was on my bucket list," she said.
Still, it was more than just a tourist stop. Some of the girls aided by the foundation were brought along and got the chance to view this icon of their nation for the first time.
"For most, it was their first bus ride. Their first holiday. Their first stop in a hotel," Watkins said.
The visit was an education for everyone.
"And to see it through their eyes, it was great," Watkins said with a sigh.
Anyone interested in more information about the Cambodian Arts and Scholarship Foundation can find it online at www.cambodianscholarship.org or by mail at P.O. Box 186, Portland, ME 04112.
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