(A Project REACH feature report)

Kelechi Ekpechan had saved money for an abortion. She was 20 years old, pregnant and on her own financially. Her parents were back home in Nigeria with financial problems of their own. But in way that Kelechi would only appreciate later, all these problems turned out to be the seeds of good things to come.

‘I had to send money home to Nigeria. I couldn’t get the abortion then,’ she recalled recently. After reaching out for help from Pregnancy Care Center  in Westchester, Kelechi delivered her baby more than three years ago and turned her life around. Little Jhad ‘is my reason for living,’ Kelechi said. ‘I would not give him up for all the world.’ She was a good daughter to send money home when her parents were in need, and she has been rewarded for her generosity with a beautiful child, said Angela McNaughton, who helped Kelechi through her crisis. ‘She has become a wonderful mother now herself,’ she said.

McNaughton runs a counseling center in New Rochelle called Pregnancy Care Center. She also is director of the Elinor Martin Residence, a home for single mothers and their children located on the campus of St. Agnes Hospital in White Plains. When Kelechi was seven months pregnant and no longer welcome by the people she was living with, social workers at New Rochelle hospital called Pregnancy Care Center. McNaughton counseled the young woman, and then placed her in the Elinor Martin Residence after she delivered the baby. The usual stay for most new mothers at the pro-life residence is less than one year. Realizing that Kelechi need extra help and support, McNaughton allowed her to stay there with her baby 18 months.

“I needed love at the time, a lot of love,” Kelechi said. “I was scared to make that move to the real world.”

The women at the residence are required to attend school or job training classes during the day, while trained staffers care for the children at the residence. Kelechi attended Marie Smith Urban Street Academy, where she took a computer literacy course and gained advanced business skills. The training gave her a new outlook on life and hope for the future. “For the first time I was able to make eye contact with a person I was speaking to,’ she said.

She now lives in her own apartment in Manhattan and works as receptionist in a doctor’s office. She reported with beaming eyes that she is engaged to be married next year. One day she hopes to return to Nigeria with her son, she added.

'Kelechi has come a long way,’ McNaughton said. ‘It has been a great joy to watch her grow and mature. And her child is just adorable. They are a perfect example of the good that can come out of difficulties if there are people who will help a woman give life to her child.”

Of her time at the pro-life residence, Kelechi said, ‘They were very nice, warm and friendly. I was very happy that they came into my path. I know that I was meant to have this child, and they were there when I really needed help.’

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