Fatuma Hussein, founder and Executive Director of IRCM, was always passionate about helping her community well before coming to Maine. When She arrived in Maine, she saw how much the Somali Community needed support. Based on her experience, she was inspired to set a foundation of culturally specific system advocacy, training, community education and culturally/linguistically appropriate direct services.

After a year long organizing, partnership building and mobilizing community, the United Somali Women of Maine was established on 8/2/2002. She then began her work serving her own community, presenting culturally specific information, collaborating with and educating systems, building bridges between systems and community designed to create a foundation for today’s multicultural communities.

Fatuma was offered several jobs to serve the growing refugee community but instead of accepting a position, she decided to forge her path by establishing the United Somali Women of Maine.

For almost 20 years, Fatuma has become a dominant voice against gendered violence and advocated for many issues directly affecting the new Maine communities across the state. In 2016, the agency changed its name Immigrant Resource Center of Maine to reflect its services, regions covered and its target populations.

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