Just before his 18th birthday, Mohamed Shidane arrived in Seattle alone. He’d fled civil war in Somalia for the U.S. without his parents. But not long after touching down in the Pacific Northwest, he had a maternal figure in his life—Sahra Farah, the director of Somali Community Services of Seattle, better known to many as Mama Sahra.
For almost 27 years Farah has helmed a nonprofit with a laundry list of services and outsize influence. Only the Minneapolis and Columbus metros can claim more Somali residents than the Seattle area. Like recent influxes of Ukrainians and Afghans, Somali refugees arrived in droves here after civil war broke
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