Single mum Lavania Oluban was paying over £1,000 in childcare for “someone else to look after her son” before she made the bold move to quit the corporate world and enjoy a better work-life balance. And she has never looked back.
The 37-year-old earned a large salary of over £50k as a medical representative, but it didn’t buy happiness as she barely saw her son, Arlo as she travelled across the country for work. Now a teacher at a school on the Kings Norton estate she grew up on, alongside running a popular Birmingham blog, Lavania earns half what she used to, but loves every minute of the life she’s created for herself.
The mum, who grew up in the tower blocks on Five Ways before moving to the Pool Farm estate of Hawkesley, remembers her childhood as a close-knit community where her family “knew all the neighbours.” Deprivation and a lack of opportunities were apparent, and some lived “different lifestyles” to her family, but a lot from the estate have been similarly successful due to their hard work, she says.
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This January, we’re launching Fresh Starts, a series of positive stories shining a light on the inspiring Brummies who overcame life’s greatest challenges to live fulfilled lives. Kicking off in the notoriously negative month, we’ll be sharing the journeys of those who fought back against adversity to find happiness against all the odds.
Whether it’s grief or poverty, health struggles or addiction, we want to highlight that change really is possible – from those with first-hand experience.
If you have an inspiring story to share and want to be part of setting a positive agenda for 2025, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us by emailing stephanie.balloo@reachplc.com
Now the Head of Food and Nutrition at Ark Academy, Lavania said: “You can see you still have that deprivation, the lack of opportunities for some people, it’s like it’s cyclical. But there’s a lot of people that I know who have done really well and kept their heads down. It’s about the choices that you make.
“I can see it, some of the children haven’t got very nice home lives and it’s quite chaotic, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to have a bad life in the future – if you stay in school, get your GCSEs, go to college. If you want to be successful, you can.”
For her, it meant passing her 11+ exams, attending King Edwards VI Camp Hill School for Girls before enrolling at a University. She has since overcome the challenges of being a single mum and juggling a stressful career to find a fulfilled life for herself and her seven-year-old son.
She recalled: “I remember being in a restaurant with Arlo and a waitress didn’t come to take our order because she thought we were waiting for someone else to come, like a man or dad. I had to get up and get the menus myself.
“Things like that could make someone upset, but you just have to think, there’s more people that are single parents and you’ve got choices; you can either stay in and be sad or you can go out and have fun.”
Lavania Oluban left the corporate world where she earned good money for a better quality of life
(Image: Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live)
For years, she worked as a medical rep – but it all changed in lockdown when she found herself working from home “chained to the laptop 9-5”. She explained: “They said my two year old was too much of a distraction and he needed to go to nursery.
“I lived in a house with my parents, I’d just left my partner at the end of 2019, so I was like ‘I don’t have an office, I’m in my parents’ home, in a bedroom, I haven’t got a spare bedroom.’
“I was at the point where I didn’t want to do it anymore. Even before lockdown, I was rushing out, leaving the house at 6.30/7am dropping Arlo off at nursery, I was covering hospitals down to Cornwall up to Chester. I’d be on the motorway thinking: ‘If I don’t get back for his nursery within the next ten minutes then they’re going to start fining me, £10 for every 5 minutes. I’d be stressed.
Lavania, a food teacher, is now able to spend quality time with her son
(Image: Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live)
“I barely got to see my child, I was paying someone else to look after him, yeah we might have had the money for designer handbags and heels, but that wasn’t fun.” Extra training courses away from home, staying in a hotel for a week at a time, were an added challenge of the lifestyle.
She added: “The other thing was the cost of childcare, I was paying over £1,000 a month for the nursery. I could go part time and cut my bills by 40 per cent and not pay someone else to look after my baby because I was net zero at that point.
“There was no point in me going to work and paying the childcare, it just didn’t make any sense.” Then came an “epiphany in lockdown” when she realised she could teach as she found herself helping relatives’ or friends’ children with their homework or projects.
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After undertaking her PGCE, she applied for a job on the estate she grew up on and started her job at the same time her son began reception. “I knew I was going to be off with him for half term and Christmas. I didn’t look back after doing my PGCE.
“The hardest thing for me now is balancing the finances, so I used to be on the upper tax rate, so 50k plus, I had a brilliant salary so you can imagine my lifestyle then. I didn’t have to budget as such, I’d pay my bills then I had loads of fun money, so making the sacrifice to go to Uni for a year where I had no income was difficult.
Lavania Oluban is now a food teacher in a ‘rewarding’ job she loves
(Image: Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live)
“I’m earning 50 per cent less than what I used to earn. So the hardest thing is changing my lifestyle to accommodate, but there’s Vinted for clothing, I do look after things, I like to recycle – I found my kitchen table in a skip outside the pub!”
Asked her advice to finding a fulfilled life, she said: “Arlo is my little sidekick, my best friend. It’s just about finding the fun in the everyday. You’ve just got to get out.”
The Birmingham blogger also runs The Amazing Adventures of Me alongside her career to inform other families on the best places to visit, and things to do, with their kids.
Have you got a similarly inspiring story to tell? We would love to hear from you. Please get in touch by emailing stephanie.balloo@reachplc.com