“That’s something that is my heart and soul,’’ Ihedigbo said. “I’ve been given a platform to play football at the highest level and I can help other people.
“I look at it this way: My parents excelled to where they are without the help of others. It was just determination and hard work. I’m in a position where I can help other people get to the level my parents did and even higher.’’
In 2008, Ihedigbo established the HOPE Africa Foundation as an extension of the work his father did in Nigeria, where he and his wife started the Nigerian American Technological and Agricultural College. During a trip to work with the college in 2002, Apollos Ihedigbo died of kidney failure, just before Ihedigbo graduated from Amherst Regional High.
Ihedigbo is using his foundation to carry on the dreams of his father to educate underprivileged children. The foundation is expanding its efforts and is teaming up with UMass to provide scholarships to children from Africa who want to pursue higher education and return to their countries to make an impact.
“One of the goals of why we left Nigeria for the United States was to study and achieve and go back to Nigeria to establish a school that will support the children or families who could not do it on their own,’’ Rose Ihedigbo said. “So education became very important to us.
“We wanted all of our children to achieve some form of education. My commitment to them - including James - was I would support them, but you have to graduate.’’
Childhood lessons
Apollos and Rose Ihedigbo left Nigeria for New York in the late 1970s with their three children so Apollos could complete his bachelor’s degree. He received a scholarship to UMass, and he and his family would settle in Amherst in the early 1980s.
It was there that their youngest sons David and James would be born.
