[9] By 2004, the Village had become a professional organization with an annual budget of $1.3 million and a dedicated staff of sixteen full-time and ten part-time employees including a four-person construction crew.

During the last decade of her sojourn, the organization has yearly served over thousands of low-income, primarily African-American youth and families, covering several neighborhoods within a 260 square block area in North Philadelphia and transformed more than 120 vacant lots into gardens and parks.

She introduced and curated the wall-sized papercut pieces by the late Chinese folk artist Ku Shu-Lan in the exhibition Race, Class, Gender ≠ Character at AVAM.

Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, Director and Founder of the Museum dedicated its 11th mega-exhibition to Lily Yeh because “her work so artfully and lovingly transcends race, class, nationality and gender.”[13] Traveling to Accra, Ghana in 2002, Yeh collaborated with educator Heidi Owu and community leaders to carry out a land transformation project in an impoverished neighborhood in Jamestown,[14] located in the old section of the capital city Accra.

The project engaged hundreds of children and adults in transforming a bleak courtyard into a public space full of patterns and colors.

In 2013, Lily Yeh led a three-day workshop for children and adults living in An Kang public housing in a poor and neglected area to imagine and create together their re-developed community through story-sharing and art.

High unemployment, dwindling populations and rows of abandoned or decaying buildings speak to the forced obliteration of history and loss of identity which they experienced.