Lily Yeh - Visionary

Lily Yeh has spent the past eighteen years helping a bleak and impoverished area in the middle of North Philadelphia to transform itself into a community of proud and caring people, proud of themselves and their work.

It is called The Village of Arts and Humanities.

Now there is an oasis filled with vegetable and flower gardens, murals of paint and mosaic, sculptures, plays and dances created by local teenagers, classes teaching self-confidence and sharing through all the arts and cottage industries.

This renovated village has become an inspiration to the surrounding area and is considered a model of enlightened urban renewal. Lily’s astonishing vision and powerful work earned her a considerable Ford Foundation Leadership Grant. Lily Yeh is using that grant to transform the world--one village at a time.

While expanding her community work with The Village of Arts and Humanities, Lily has made short exploratory outreach visits to other countries: Equador--to help street children; Rwanda--to aid survivors of the 1004 genocidal war in Africa. In China she was so inspired by courageous artists--penniless, but rich in spirit--who paint in destitute communities to encourage the creation of beauty that she started a new non-profit organization.

In her own words:

As for myself, I have established another non-profit organization named
Barefoot Artists, Inc. Inspired by the work performed by the Chinese barefoot
doctors, the name implies working for the poor, going wherever needed,
practicing the arts, bringing healing and moving on. My aim is that it will
be more about projects and less about organization building.

This coming year, I will be working with a school for the children of migrant
workers in Beijing, the poorest of the poor. I visited one family during my
last visit to the school and found that the family lived right next to a garbage
dump and recycling trash is their means of earning a livelihood. There are
tens and thousands of children attending these schools, which are poorly
equipped; there is a general lack of vitality and inspiration. I will be doing
some workshops in training teachers and working with children to transform
their environment for the better.

Then, the real big project is in Rwanda. I am collaborating with a local host
to work with a survivors village consisting of 100 families with 500 children.
All the households are headed by women. We will be doing economic
development like buying goats and chickens and building a mushroom farm
and planting avocado trees, etc. for the people. Then, we will do art about
remembering and reconciliation and begin to paint the village. This way
people won’t suffer from hunger and they will have strength to paint, and
the result will be beautiful. Anyway, this is a start. We will see where it goes.

In the summer of 2006 Lily’s Barefoot Artists will go to Iran to work with a peace making mission and then return to China. She will also go back to Rwanda where, during a previous visit, she helped villagers revive their spirits by painting vibrantly-colored angels on their church--mighty symbols of love!

Currently, Lily Yeh’s work includes three projects:

1. To finish Genocide Memorial Park to honor the 800,000 who died in the war between the Tutsi and Hutu Tribes
2. To teach children such healing arts as painting and gardening
3. To foster new skills badly needed for local rebuilding of the community
   ie: metal working to make gutters and holding tanks for rainwater so scarce
   during recent droughts

Lily needs your help--not only financially but spiritually--to know there are people who care about what she is doing. Your encouragement will help her to continue to inspire dignity, pride in accomplishment and love in communities around the world.

Please visit our Donors Page and assist Lily Yeh in her life-generating transformation of the world. Ten per cent of your donation will go to Gardens for Humanity and will be used to aid other visionaries in their efforts to improve the quality of life on Earth.