barefoot artists
Recognizing that creativity and beauty are powerful agents for healing and change, Barefoot Artists works with poor communities around the globe practicing the arts to bring healing, self-empowerment and social change
2026 Goi Peace Award Laureate: LILY YEH
The Goi Peace Foundation will present the 2026 Goi Peace Award to Lily Yeh, artist and social innovator. Previous recipients include Jane Goodall and Bill Gates.
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.
ESTHER AND
THE DREAM of
ONE HUMAN FAMILY
THROUGH
DECEMBER 2030
American Visionary
art Museum
Lily Yeh’s The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Acrylic on Brown Paper, 2015 is featured in the exibition Esther and the Dream of One Human Family at the American Visionary Museum in Baltimore. The show pays tribute to humanity’s unjust persecution of innocents and the dream of a world at peace and has been extended through December 2025.
LILY YEH 2024 TED TALK
viewed over Half a million times!
Since its premiere on December 4, 2024 Lily Yeh’s 2024 TED Talk has received over 500,000 views on the TED website and another 30,000 views since being published on TED’s YouTube channel.
Lily Yeh talkes with TED Curator Chris Anderson on the TED Interview
From Taiwan to Rwanda, artist Lily Yeh has traveled all over the world in pursuit of more than just aesthetic pleasure — and she’s activating local communities on this journey. Chris and Lily chat about Lily’s artistic evolution, discuss how art encourages growth and healing, and examine the positive effect that art can have on individuals long, even long after a work has been completed.
Visit the TED Audio Collective website.
Lily Yeh
featured in new book!
Barefoot Artists Founder and Director Lily Yeh is featured in the new book "Infectious Generosity” Chris Anderson. The bestselling author, media pioneer, and curator of TED explores one of humankind’s defining but overlooked impulses, and how we can super-charge its potential to build a hopeful future
From the book:
Barefoot artists documentary
This lyrical and emotionally wrenching film explores the methods and motivations of Lily Yeh and her revolutionary work. It documents the two sides of Lily’s life: her international ventures mending the broken and helping to heal weakened spirits in communities in North America, Africa, China, and India, and a personal journey within, to repair her own fractured family.
What People Are Saying
"Lily Yeh is a global angel. She not only believes in the power of people, but inspires and ignites them through her own creative firc. Lily Yeh changed my life completely, and if yor read “Awakening Creativity” your life as you know it will begin to change, as well, through the vibrancy of art in action called love."
— Terry tempest williams
"Turabi Shimiya! Turabi Shimiya!" ("Happy to see you! Happy to see you!")
— Children of Rugerero, Rwanda, upon Lily Yeh's return to the village
"Ms. Lily Yeh has an extaordinary ability to combine the best elements ofthe left and right brain in countless projects of intemational acclaim. we can use her book as testament and a road map to a far better world,"
— Bill strickland
