Lily Yeh
Artist, Social innovator (United States)
Lily Yeh to Receive the 2026 Goi Peace Award
The Goi Peace Foundation will present the 2026 Goi Peace Award to Lily Yeh, artist and social innovator.
The selection committee has chosen Lily Yeh for the Goi Peace Award in honor of her outstanding contributions to realizing a just and sustainable future by empowering people to transform their despair into hope through the power of art.
For many years, Ms. Yeh has continued to stand by people around the world who have suffered emotional wounds and trauma due to poverty and conflict.
By harnessing the power of art to heal people’s hearts and draw out their inner creativity, she has developed programs that promote economic self-reliance and fostered the revitalization of communities facing difficulties.
Ms. Yeh has been widely recognized for her achievements in transforming the despair of socially marginalized people into hope and working toward the realization of a just and sustainable future.
She will receive the Goi Peace Award during the 2026 Goi Peace Foundation Forum, to be held on Saturday, November 28. (More information about the event will be announced soon.)
Lily Yeh, born in Guizhou Province, China, in 1941 and raised in Taiwan, is an artist, educator and social innovator. Ms. Yeh emigrated to the United States to study art at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her MFA. In 1989, while teaching as a professor of painting and art history at the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), she co-founded The Village of Arts and Humanities, transforming more than 120 abandoned lots and neglected spaces into parks and community centers, leading to the international recognition of her organization as a model for community revitalization through the arts. In 2002, she founded Barefoot Artists to support her international work and replicate the Village model in devastated communities around the world. In addition to the Rwanda Healing Project for survivors of the genocide, Ms. Yeh has led collaborative projects in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States, working with local residents in the communities, and has created numerous educational, agricultural and economic initiatives. She is recipient of the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award, a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence, and multiple honorary doctorates, and is the author of numerous books.
Learn more about Barefoot Artists.
About the Goi Peace Foundation and the Goi Peace Award
Based in Japan, the Goi Peace Foundation is a public benefit organization supported by members around the world working together to create a culture of peace. Its mission is to foster a sustainable and harmonious global society by promoting consciousness, values and wisdom for creating peace, and building cooperation among individuals and organizations across diverse fields, including education, science, culture and the arts.
Established by the Goi Peace Foundation in 2000, the Goi Peace Award is an international award presented annually to honor individuals and organizations in various fields that have made outstanding contributions toward the realization of a peaceful and harmonious world as envisioned in the Declaration for All Life on Earth.