After 25 years of extraordinary service, leadership, and love, we are saying Thank You to someone who has shaped New American Pathways in ways that cannot be measured by numbers alone, even though the numbers themselves are remarkable.
From 2002 through the end of 2025, Safia played a role in resettling over 10,000 individuals and families, each one arriving with hope, uncertainty, and the need for someone who would walk alongside them. For decades, that someone was Safia.
When Paedia Mixon first met Safia in 2005 at RRISA, one of New AP’s predecessor organizations, everyone called her Hooyo, the Somali word for mother. It was not a nickname given lightly. Safia was a fierce advocate, a steady presence, and a protector for the families she served and for the staff learning how to serve well.
She taught her colleagues how to see what others might miss: the quiet signs of struggle, the fragility of stability for families without extended support systems, and the reality that one illness, accident, or job loss could push a family into crisis. Safia believed deeply that resettlement did not end at arrival. It required compassion, flexibility, and a willingness to respond when life became overwhelming.
Long before resources were plentiful, Safia pushed the organization to prioritize emergency support for families in crisis. As New AP grew, she was the voice insisting that emergency assistance be permanent, intentional, and funded year after year. Because of her leadership, hundreds of families have received emergency rent assistance, food, utilities, clothing, and other basic needs during the hardest moments of their lives.
As Safia retires at the end of this year, we are honoring her legacy in the most meaningful way we know how. Our emergency assistance program will now be named Hooyo’s Fund, reflecting the role she has played for so many. This fund provides emergency food, rent, utilities, clothing, funeral expenses, and other essential support for individuals and families facing crisis. It will serve as a constant reminder of Safia’s belief that when families fall, someone must be there to help them stand again.
In her honor, we have also launched a giving campaign to sustain this vital work. If you would like to support families facing emergencies and carry forward Hooyo’s legacy of care, you can text HOOYO to 41444 to donate.
Safia’s impact lives on in every family she supported, every staff member she mentored, and every system she helped strengthen. Her legacy is written into the fabric of New American Pathways and into the lives of thousands who found safety, dignity, and hope because she was there.
Thank you, Safia, for 25 years of unwavering commitment, advocacy, and love. We are better because of you, and we will carry that legacy forward in all that we do.