Our Story
A Tradition of Mercy, A Legacy in Detroit.
For nearly 35 years, Mercy Education Project has offered educational services that open doors for women and girls in Detroit. We don't just open the door to success. We walk our students through it, and the impact reaches their families and communities.
Our work carries on a tradition begun in 1827, when Catherine McAuley opened the first House of Mercy in Dublin to offer women and girls shelter, education, and a way forward. That tradition reached Detroit in 1992, when the Sisters of Mercy founded Mercy Education Project to provide tutoring for girls with limited access to resources in southwest Detroit. Today, Mercy Education Project (MEP) offers a spectrum of programs to serve the basic educational needs of women and girls across 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 foundational education for Detroit women whose high school education was, more often than not, interrupted by circumstances beyond their control, MEP added adult basic education and adult literacy components. Career success is built into every step of the program, from GED preparation through workforce development.
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 high school girls in a college knowing culture.
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 hundreds of girls and women in Detroit each year to succeed in education and move toward personal greatness. MEP continuously adapts to meet the community’s needs, while we remain true to the vision of our founders.