On her first day on campus, Niyah Black ’28 experienced the feelings typical of any new student—nervousness, excitement, uncertainty. But as she unpacked her things, she was also reckoning with her decision, just a few days earlier, to have her mother arrested.

Black lived with her mother only sporadically throughout her life, in moments when her substance use disorder had been under control. For the rest of the time, Black bounced between foster care and living with family. So finding her mother sprawled out on her front lawn, unwell and making threats, wasn’t a surprise. But it still wasn’t easy to call the police, and it weighed on her heavily in her first days at Arcadia as she double-checked to make sure she had everything she needed to start school.

In a few days, campus would return to the annual symphony of Move-In Day, as cars, densely packed with belongings, file onto campus with students eager to begin their time at Arcadia.

But for Black and many of the students in Arcadia’s Housing, Opportunities, Mentorship, and Empowerment (H.O.M.E.) Program, all of whom have some experience in foster care, their new room in Kistler or Heinz Hall isn’t just a second bedroom on campus. From this moment, it’s the only home they have.

Newly launched this year, the H.O.M.E. program supports foster care youth throughout their Arcadia experience. The six students in the first cohort receive a range of benefits, from an early move-in providing a few extra quiet days to acclimate to campus life, to financial assistance and guaranteed housing over breaks. Crucially, they receive an unprecedented degree of personal attention and support. In addition to the program staff, each student has two of their own faculty and staff mentors to serve as a trusted source of emotional support and to help them navigate the complexities of college life, whether applying for scholarships and financial aid, academic planning and registering for classes, networking and getting involved in campus life, and dealing with crises. Students are connected to every possible resource at the University, supported by liaisons from Student Health Services, Residence Life and Housing, and more, including a dedicated on-campus case manager.

It’s all in an effort to help overcome obstacles so these students can succeed, says Christine Storch, director of student engagement, who leads the program. Whereas foster care youth typically grow up without any safety net, the H.O.M.E. program provides layer after layer of support, from weekly one-on-one check-ins and group meetings to program-wide dinners and events.

“We’re designing this program to really have that wraparound care, to make sure that their first line of defense is knowing that there are people always there for them,” she says.

To qualify, students simply need to have some experience in the foster care system. The specifics or length of time aren’t important, and what quickly becomes apparent is just how unique each of their journeys is. They share common themes—trauma, insecurity, loneliness—but the details are as individual as the students themselves.

Some students, like Black, spent their lives in the system. She describes each of her periods of care as episodes from the book and television show A Series of Unfortunate Events. In that series, the main characters move from caretaker to caretaker. Each stay begins as a pleasant experience that offers the promise of a peaceful life. Inevitably, the characters find themselves in a setting that’s worse than ever.

This see-saw of hope, disappointment, and abuse took a toll. By high school, she had begun using substances herself. She struggled with body image issues and figuring out her sexual identity. She began inflicting self-harm. Eventually, Black attempted to take her own life, desperately hoping someone would discover her plans and reach out to help. That help never came, and it was only through luck that she was unsuccessful.

It doesn’t sound like the story of a student who moved into a residence hall just a few months prior. But Black, like every student in the H.O.M.E. program, is nothing if not resilient.

***

The earliest memories that Yeimi Cifuentes Diaz ’27 has of her parents occurred through a computer screen. Her parents moved to the United States from Guatemala in search of work and opportunity when she was young while she stayed behind to be raised by her grandmother. Their every interaction was digital, from birthdays and holidays to school milestones and the everyday tender moments of childhood.

Eager to finally meet the young girl their daughter had become, and concerned for her lack of opportunities in Guatemala, they sent for her to join them in the U.S. when Cifuentes Diaz was 9. She trekked through Guatemala, into Mexico, over the border into Texas, alone but for other hopeful migrants and the coyote (a guide paid to help migrants navigate the journey into the U.S.) who led them. She traveled over 1,000 exhausting and dangerous miles, leaving the only home she knew in pursuit of the parental love and security she longed to feel.

After crossing the Rio Grande, she stayed at an immigrant detention center. She doesn’t know how long she was there—it could have been more than a week or just a few days—but after a time, she moved into a group home until she was reunited with her father in Philadelphia.

It wasn’t until she met Storch that Cifuentes Diaz realized that the group home was foster care, and she joined the H.O.M.E. program for her sophomore year.

“I feel safe in the environment that they’ve created,” Cifuentes Diaz says of her time in H.O.M.E. “I have all the help I need from them. But I’m kind of shy about it, like I don’t want to take too much—and they’re like, no, we’re here to help you.”

When students are struggling to pay tuition or missing everyday necessities, the H.O.M.E. staff find a solution. But perhaps the most valuable resource is the support and friendship of Storch and the core team responsible for the program: co-director Donavan McCargo, EdD, vice president for campus life and dean of students; Allannah Giles ’23, ’25M, coordinator of student engagement; and Miracle Ruiz ’24, ’27M, graduate student success coordinator.

“Having a support system this strong is still weird to me because I’m not used to people validating my feelings,” says Black. “But with them, I always feel heard.”

“When each student comes into my office, their issues become my own, and I want to help them figure out how to solve that,” says Storch. “The H.O.M.E. students are dealing with very specific issues, and it’s heartbreaking at times. But it’s their life, and we aim to be that support that they need, telling them that they’re home. Arcadia is their home. They don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

Storch and McCargo previously worked together in the Providing Resources and Opportunities for Future Standouts (PROFS) program at Kutztown University. PROFS and H.O.M.E. share in their DNA an understanding of the disparities faced by students who have been in foster care, while H.O.M.E. adds a new holistic, all-hands-on-deck approach. Of the 400,000+ youth in foster care annually in the U.S., only around 3 percent obtain a bachelor’s degree, compared to more than 35 percent of the general population. The reasons are myriad, ranging from the tangible, like housing instability, financial insecurity, and the need to work, to more complex factors: the effects of trauma, feelings of distrust, and poor self-worth.

“As someone who has done everything by myself, accepting help can be hard,” says Cifuentes Diaz. “The whole program has given me these little moments where I need to let go of my fear that I’m using too many resources, or that I don’t deserve this.”

Higher educational outcome disparities of students in foster care is partly what inspired Nathaniel Williams, founder and president of HumanWorks Affiliates Inc., a cluster of social services organizations, to serve as a critical partner to both the PROFS and H.O.M.E. programs. Growing up in foster care himself, Williams found higher education to be a source of his own empowerment.

“I think it’s a great liberator and a way to transcend some of the events that have happened in people’s lives,” he says. “The foster care system does a very bad job of sharing different options with young people as to what life may look like afterwards.”

As a partner, Williams provides crucial financial support and program guidance. He also serves as a role model—someone who transcended that 3 percent statistic. But beyond academic and professional success, Williams hopes the program leads to even deeper feelings of self-realization.

“They’re coming into who they are as a person, and that’s the most beautiful part,” he says.

Linda Ruth Paskell ’81, ’96MEd, an adjunct professor and artist, was excited to join her co-mentor Diego Joseph, student success operations manager, in meeting her H.O.M.E mentee for the first time at an early-semester dinner event. They chatted about Arcadia and the normal things going on with any new student. Those small, everyday validations of worth are a big part of what she hopes to bring to her mentorship.

“None of us are defined by our circumstances, and it is a privilege to come alongside them during this challenging season of life, and to provide hope and inspiration in a particular way,” she says. “Through a simple meal together, offering hospitality in my home and engaging in meaningful and caring conversation, I hope to gently build trust and a lasting friendship as they chase after their dreams creatively, intelligently and with our full support, as they give back to the world one day.”

It’s something that Black has already experienced in her short time in the program.

“I feel like I’m safe here, like I finally am in a place where I belong,” she says. “I never said, anywhere I’ve lived, in a foster home or at my mom’s house, that I ever felt comfortable to be who I am as a person or to be my own self. I always had to suppress my personality. I was always seen as too weird or too this or too that, but here, I can be myself. I feel like I’m home.”

***

It’s late September, just a few weeks into the semester. Cifuentes Diaz is packing her bags—after a year of commuting to campus, she’s about to move into campus housing.

“As a first-generation student, as the first daughter in my family, I have a lot of responsibilities, and being a commuter would constantly interfere with my academic activities. It was a big problem my first year, and Christine was like, ‘No, we need to get you on campus,’” she says. “Now, I can finally focus on me.”

The incident with Black’s mother took place only a few weeks ago, and she’s still dealing with the fallout, managing the reaction from her mother, and helping her younger siblings. But she’s a self-proclaimed expert at compartmentalizing—she’s always needed to be—and she’s excited, too.

She’s applying to study abroad through Arcadia’s Preview, where she hopes to spend a week in Sicily or Athens. She’s still not sure which. In a moment of reprieve, it’s the biggest decision weighing on her mind.