How An Impoverished Immigrant Montco Mother Of 4 Saved Her Family

COLLEGEVILLE, PA — Nola Oladipo traveled 5,336 miles across the planet to find a better life for her children. But when she arrived in Montgomery County, she had no home.

It was 1996. Homeless, the mother of a daughter and triplet sons, on the streets of Pottstown, Nola did the only thing she could do. She found a shelter that would take her and her family in, and she did everything she could to claw her way out of the unforgiving hole that society — without a safety net, without a firm structure in place to handle humanitarian crises — had all but dug for her.

She looked at the world around her. Cold. Industrial. But reasonably safe, and on the horizon, glimmers of hope.

From a friend, Nola found out about the Milton Hershey School, a private boarding school out in Dauphin County that provides free housing for students. She applied for her daughter, Mariam, first.

Mariam got in.

Then came the triplets, Abiola, Olayiwola, and Olajide. They applied. And they were accepted.

That glimmer of hope was becoming a reality, but it came at a terrible cost: Nola could not come along. She had to say goodbye to her children, for now, during their precious formative years, in order for them all to have a chance at a better future.

With the kids away at school, Nola stayed in the shelter, kept her head down, and kept working. It wasn't long before she had the resources to go back to school herself. She earned her GED.

She got a job.

All the kids needed, meanwhile, was an opportunity. They thrived. Mariam became president of the Student Government Association, and she was even quoted in a book about her impressive time-management skills. She graduated in 2015, and then the triplets graduated in 2018. Two of the twins went on to attend Villanova University. Another went to Lehigh University.

Nola just needed a chance, too. She thrived in her job, and was quickly promoted to a supervisory position. She now is in charge of a group home in Collegeville, caring for individuals facing mental health challenges.

Raising children can be the challenge of a lifetime in the best of circumstances. For Nola, impoverished, an immigrant, a single mother, living a homeless shelter with her family in an alien world, oceans away from all she'd ever known, all it took was enormous sacrifice. And faith.