DU Alumni

Alumnus heads foundation that helps kids around the world

Through the Nathan Yip Foundation, Jimmy and Linda Yip have raised more than $2.5 million to help some 6,000 underprivileged children around the world. Photo courtesy of the Nathan Yip Foundation

Through the Nathan Yip Foundation, Jimmy and Linda Yip have raised more than $2.5 million to help some 6,000 underprivileged children around the world. Photo courtesy of the Nathan Yip Foundation

When Jimmy and Linda Yip lost their 19-year-old son, Nathan, to an automobile accident in 2001, they carried on his dream of helping underprivileged youth by forming a foundation in his name.

“I had just named [the Yips] the godparents to my son six months prior, so I went through the whole funeral with them,” says David Thomson (BSBA ’86), a friend of the family who has been president of the foundation since its inception. “[Nathan] had been part of a club called Future Givers in the school where he went, and it’s about giving back to the underprivileged. The parents thought, ‘We should do something with that.’ We had a celebration the first year, but we weren’t sure we were going to put it into a foundation. We ended up doing that the second year; we probably had 400 or 500 people come to an event, and the momentum started to grow.”

More than a decade later, the Nathan Yip Foundation has raised more than $2.5 million to help some 6,000 underprivileged children around the world. Its work was recognized in 2011 by Forbes magazine, which named Jimmy and Linda Yip among its “48 Heroes of Philanthropy.” The couple goes on every building trip, and each year, Jimmy Yip travels to China to hand deliver $150 scholarships that cover school materials and basic necessities for one student for an entire year.

The foundation has supported many projects worldwide and has built seven schools and two orphanages in China. The foundation also partners with organizations such as Shining Hope for Communities, which works with girls in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, and Asistencia de Educacion, which helps young people in rural areas of Mexico attend college.

“The kids from Mexico, we know that some of them have gone on to college now,” Thomson says. “And we know some of the kids in China have gone on into the city and gotten jobs. We sponsored one school that was a technical school — teaching them technical skills they could take into the big cities and get real-life jobs. That’s the idea, is to educate them to have a successful life.”

University of Denver senior journalism and communications major Mireya Saenz has worked at the foundation since July 2012, helping to track finances and plan events like the organization’s annual Chinese New Year gala in February. She recently traveled to an orphanage in Juarez, Mexico, to interact with some of the students the Nathan Yip Foundation is helping.

“It was awesome,” she says. “You give money away, and you know it’s going to a good cause, but when you actually go and see it and you see the conditions that these kids are living in and you talk to them and you hear their situation, it’s a very humbling, amazing experience. It’s very life-changing, and it definitely puts things in perspective.”

The Nathan Yip Foundation’s 2014 Chinese New Year Gala is Feb. 1 at the Marriott DTC; visit the foundation’s website for more information and to register.

 

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