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2009 ACADEMY GOLD MEDAL OF HONOR
RECIPIENT

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate
Dr. Mohammad Yunus has dedicated his life to creating opportunities for the world's poor who now comprise over 60 percent of the world's population but live off only 5 percent of its income. For thirty years, he has provided “micro-credit” to tiny businesses in the poorest villages of Bangladesh. With loans of only one or two dollars, small family businesses could free themselves from unscrupulous money lenders who starved their small operations of any profit, thus perpetuating the local poverty. Dr. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for improving the lives of so many of the poor.
2009 ACADEMY GOLD MEDAL OF HONOR
RECIPIENT

Lily Yeh, Founding Director and Lead Artists, Barefoot Artists, Inc.
Lily Yeh is an internationally celebrated artist and award-winning founder and former executive and artistic director of the Village of Arts and Humanities. Since 1986, with the help of neighborhood children and adults, Yeh has built the Village from an abandoned lot into an organization and a community. She has infused the Village with her own artistic sensitivity and vision, collaborating with other artists and community residents to create a place that brings art into both the physical space and daily rhythms of life. Expanding beyond North Philadelphia, Yeh’s work has taken her to communities in other parts of the country as well as abroad.