(This story originally appeared on CBS 21 in Harrisburg on Feb. 20, 2023.)
A couple years ago, Lancaster Bible College basketball player Matt Ilodigwe (’23) began seeing an increase in his followers on TikTok. Now, the collegiate basketball player has over 250,000 TikTok followers and is using his platform to raise money and awareness for Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County (CAP). Matt, a 2022 graduate of Lycoming College, is a student in LBC | Capital’s Master of Science in Nonprofit Management program.
He said his inspiration to give back is his mom, Colette, who raised Matt and his three brothers by herself. “I deflected all of the struggle and the pain on me so that they could enjoy their childhood,” Colette told the television station. “I never wanted them to be burdened by the struggled that we had to endure.”
Matt said he and his brothers always looked up to their mom and admired her work ethic. “She did a great job (of) being both the mom and the dad. She just put her head down every day, got to work. She never made excuses,” he said.
Now, Matt is giving back to CAP Lancaster to break generational poverty, just like his mom did for him and his brothers. “It’s a organization that tackles poverty, and I have a connection to poverty,” he said. Continue watching and reading here or below…
