Mercy is a young girl living in a small community outside of Lusaka, Zambia.
Like so many of their neighbors, Mercy’s family doesn’t have a lot of money.
74% of the population of Zambia lives on $1.25 a day.
They sell eggs and tomatoes at the local market to make ends meet.
Mercy loves to play with her siblings and has big dreams for her future. She wants to be a nurse. Her parents save everything they can so that they can pay for Mercy to go to school.
Then, one day, everything changes. Mercy is assaulted by a neighbor and becomes pregnant.
She is thirteen years old.
Her family doesn’t know how they’re going to feed another baby. Tensions rise.
All of a sudden, she can’t see her bright future anymore. She feels like she has lost all hope.
As a pregnant teenager, she is ostracized by her community and has to drop out of school.
Despite pressure to stay silent, Mercy makes the brave choice and reports her abuse.
by reporting the crime, mercy is connected to the kukhoma project and They invite her to move into the TKP House.
She receives counseling to help her process her abuse and trauma.
She begins to deepen her relationship with Jesus through prayer and relational discipleship.
Over the next few months, the team at TKP takes Mercy to doctor’s appointments to make sure she and her baby are healthy.
She builds new skills and she and her family participate in our agriculture program.
She meets other girls who have shared similar traumatic experiences—girls who understand her pain and become her friends.
And five months later, she delivers a healthy baby, supported by a doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies.
As Mercy grows, she begins to dream about a future beyond the TKP house and a job that will allow her to support her small family.
As her baby grows, she learns how to foster healthy child development.
She re-enrolls in school and works hard to catch up on her studies.
After two years, Mercy graduates from our program and continues her academic studies. Her parents use everything they learned in the agriculture program to help support her and her new baby.
Best of all, she knows she is never alone. TKP will always walk with her.
