We have been on a 39-year journey of hope and healing.
Fred and Karleen Dewey founded Mercy Ministries (now Embrace Mercy) in 1986 with a vision of hope for vulnerable and at-risk children.
Having brought attachment-focused care to their own foster and adopted children, the Deweys turned their attention to the wider community with Mercy Ministries’ growing staff and volunteer team. The thread that tied together every program – from equine therapy to education and support for teen parents, and community-building programs for urban youth to poverty alleviation – was to positively impact outcomes for trauma-impacted youth.
The Deweys’ work in Romania began in the early 1990s with the airing of a TV documentary about abandoned children in Romania. With little more than a name on a piece of paper, Fred and Karleen set off to this country just recently opened to foreigners after the downfall of brutal communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
After some harrowing travel adventures along routes not equipped for foreigners – including that dark railway station – The Deweys arrived in Romania with their travel documents and information missing. But they persevered and eventually found several other people working in Marghita, a small town in northwestern Romania. After viewing first-hand the extreme distress of so many abandoned babies and children, they arranged to bring professionals and specialists to train local caregivers.
From 2000 to 2012 Embrace Mercy designed and staffed a summer camp program for Romanian school-aged children residing in government-run institutions. When Diane Pulvermiller and Melanie Dewey – themselves adoptive parents - became co-directors of Embrace Mercy in 2013, they brought a deep understanding of the life-long impacts of complex developmental trauma and dedicated themselves to walking alongside this original cohort of campers throughout their lifespans.
During this period, this unique approach allowed Embrace Mercy to continuously adapt programming to meet the changing needs of this “extended family” of trauma survivors as they aged out of the government system. Embrace Mercy focused on life skills training, community building, spiritual formation, social justice education, and - critically – trauma healing grounded in relationships and somatic modalities.
Seeking to share the success of these interventions, for the last decade Embrace Mercy has increasingly focused on training other professionals and caregivers in body-based and attachment-focused trauma healing modalities.
Today Embrace Mercy reaches a wide range of caregivers, from foster and adoptive parents to social service organizations to psychology students, with these evidence-based interventions -- multiplying the opportunities for young people with complex developmental trauma to find healing and to thrive.
