Jeanette Yoffe created the Celia Center Arts Festival to provide a platform for artists who have been impacted by foster care and adoption to express their experiences through various creative mediums. This festival aims to bring together the voices of adoptees and foster youth, offering them a space to share their stories, foster community, and deepen the conversation around adoption and foster care.

Yoffe’s motivation stemmed from her personal journey as an adoptee and her desire to understand and connect with her biological roots. She learned about her first mother’s artistic background, Celia Barbosa, which inspired her to create an arts festival that would celebrate and support the creative expressions of others with similar experiences. The festival highlights the challenges and triumphs of those who were adopted as well as those who are in the foster care system, with the aim to provide emotional and psychological healing for all, through the art of self expression.