Mercy Education Project

To provide educational opportunities, life skills development and cultural enrichment for women and girls who have limited access to resources to enable them to improve the quality of their lives.

Founded by the Sisters of Mercy of Detroit in 1992 to provide tutoring for economically disadvantaged girls in southwest Detroit, Mercy Education Project (MEP) today offers a spectrum of programs to serve the basic educational needs of at-risk women and girls in southwest Detroit. Mercy Education Project began as a tutoring and summer program serving 14 girls. By the following year, GED classes for women were added. Witnessing a considerable need for remedial education for Detroit women who had dropped out of school, MEP added adult basic education and adult literacy components. With a growing number of GED graduates looking for additional career services MEP piloted several job training programs between 2004 and 2007. In 2009, MEP started the Emerging Leaders summer program for middle school girls. With a focus on leadership and personal development and fostering a college and career knowing culture, Emerging Leaders helps girls – and their families – who have had little exposure to higher education, see its benefits and prepare for its possibilities. In 2012, computer literacy instruction was integrated into the adult education services and ACT/SAT preparation was added for high school youth in the Girls’ Program. In 2013, a Spring Break College Camp was initiated as an intensive one week program immersing any interested high school girl in a college knowing culture. In the spring of 2017 Saturday Enrichment sessions were added to the resources available to girls in need of more one-to-one support. In 2019, MEP began providing digital literacy education to its students, their family members and the greater community. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 forced MEP to move all of its programming online that March. The move to remote learning brought to light the significant digital divide between those in the community who have access to a computer and reliable internet and those who do not. MEP provides assistance and referrals to students to obtain these vital resources. Once a very small tutoring program, Mercy Education Project now helps approximately 220 girls and women in Detroit each year to succeed in education and move toward greater self-sufficiency.