Our Mission
Every child deserves a safe haven!
Every child deserves to feel safe, supported, and loved.
They deserve to have their birthday celebrated. To start school with a backpack they are excited to carry. To have books of their own, clothes that make them feel good, and opportunities to play, learn, explore, and simply be a child.
For children experiencing foster care, some of these seemingly ordinary parts of childhood can carry extraordinary meaning.
Aria’s Safe Haven exists to help create more of those moments.
Our mission is to support children in foster care by helping provide the experiences, opportunities, resources, and simple joys that every child deserves.
Sharing in Aria’s spirit
Sharing was one of Aria’s favorite things to do. She shared her toys, her happiness, her affection, and seemingly everything she had with the people around her.
Aria’s Safe Haven carries that spirit forward. Through grants to charitable organizations serving children in foster care, the fund hopes to support things such as:
Comfort & Belonging
Birthday and holiday gifts, clothing, comfort items, and other things that help children feel seen and cared for.
Learning & Opportunity
Books, school supplies, educational opportunities, camps, activities, and enrichment experiences.
Experiences & Joy
Opportunities to play, explore, celebrate milestones, discover new interests, and experience the simple joys of childhood.
Support for the Journey
Programs helping children and young adults navigate foster care and the transition toward independence.
What Safe Haven supports may evolve over time, but the purpose will remain the same: helping children know that they matter.
Built to last
Aria’s Safe Haven is being established as a permanent endowed charitable fund through the Oklahoma City Community Foundation.
The fund begins with $25,000 that her Daddy had saved for Aria’s future and education. It is now being dedicated to helping create opportunities for children in foster care—in her name.
Rather than using that gift for a single project, it becomes the beginning of something intended to last.
The fund will be built through additional contributions over time. A portion of the endowment can be used to support charitable organizations and programs serving children in foster care, while the remainder continues to be invested for the future.
Start small. Give every year.
Build something lasting!
Growing together…
Aria’s Safe Haven is intentionally starting small. The goal isn’t to build everything at once. It is to contribute consistently, allow the endowment to grow, and gradually increase what it can do for children.
Each year, Aria’s Daddy plans to make an annual contribution to Aria’s Safe Haven in honor of Aria’s Race, creating a tradition in which the race supports children and families today while also helping inspire the growth of Aria’s permanent legacy.
Race registrations and donations will continue to benefit Pepper’s Ranch directly, while Aria’s family will separately contribute to Aria’s Safe Haven.
In this way, Aria’s Race can help children today while simultaneously building something for tomorrow.
Learn more about Aria’s RaceA legacy measured in childhood moments
The hope for Aria’s Safe Haven is not simply to grow a number in an account.
It is to turn that growth into moments.
A birthday celebrated.
A backpack packed for the first day of school.
A child going to camp for the first time.
A book that becomes a favorite.
A new experience.
A moment when a child realizes that someone thought of them.
Those moments may seem small.
To a child, they may be anything but.
That is the legacy Aria’s Safe Haven hopes to build.
Helping children feel safe, supported, and loved—in Aria’s name, for generations to come.
Learn more about Aria’s RaceShe loved big. She still does. She always will!