WHERE DID TPP 4-LIFE COME FROM?
OUR HISTORY & OUR NAME
TPP 4-Life (Training and Preparing People for Life) began as a vision in the heart of a newly found grace minded bible study fellowship participant named Wesley Somerville in 2013. Wesley had been helped as an at-risk youth at an early age in his life. Wesley was reared in a single parent household with fourteen other siblings and was very familiar with poverty, drugs and violence. Wesley was blessed enough to have a very strong, hard working mother in a loving family within a community that cared for him and wanted to invest in him personally. There were people that supported his membership in Boy Scouts and sporting activities, teachers who encouraged his education, neighborhood mothers who helped to nurture him, friends that looked pass his skin color and status, a special mentor that stood in as a father figure and most importantly a church family and God that loved him just to name a few blessings as he grew up in Covington, Tennessee.
Wesley has always had a burning desire to be able to pour into others as was poured into him. After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from the University of Tennessee at Martin, Wesley spent 14 years living in Fort Worth, Texas while working for a pharmaceutical company that allowed him many opportunities to volunteer within the surrounding communities. Wesley took full advantage of these opportunities while volunteering for the likes of Big Brothers Big Sisters, Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross and many others. Wesley was invited by a friend to attend an intense bible study fellowship class (BSF) for men in 2013 that met every Monday night for a 9 month period for 7 years. Wesley accepted the invitation, and this is when all of the comforts of Wesley’s day to day, routine life style began to change! Wesley’s immediate desire was to reach out to his small hometown community that had been infested with drugs and gang violence where several of his very close friends and nephews were murdered.
In the summer of 2014, an opportunity became available for Wesley and his wife, LaFonda, to relocate their family to Atlanta, Georgia. A vision was born within Wesley and supported by his wife to ‘drop their net’ and follow God’s calling of establishing a non-profit organization that mentors at-risk boys from single parent households while teaching them about the life of Jesus Christ. This brought Wesley’s burning desire to make an impact in the lives of other young at-risk boys from single parent households to reality. Wesley and LaFonda found a way to step out of the status quo and choose a life of adventure with God to enhance His Kingdom as disciples!
TPP 4-Life, Inc. was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in October, 2014 as a youth development organization for boys through Christ centered principles overseen and staffed by a combination of educators, professionals, and people who had personal experience with the problems that compel young boys to leave home, leave school, commit crimes and engage in high-risk behaviors. The name of the organization was conceived from Wesley’s fraternity of brothers during his time at UT Martin. Wesley and a group of his friends came up with the name TPP, because they lived off campus in a trailer park and played intramural basketball and flag football. Theses trailer park players (TPP) were definitely living a college lifestyle that required a whole lot of God’s grace on them. Wesley has personally witnessed the grace of God in his life as well as his college friends’ lives, and he has seen how at-risk young men can be transformed just simply by having faith in Christ and making God a priority! Matthew 6:33
TPP 4-Life, Inc is prayerful and hoping to expand into Fort Worth, Texas and Memphis, Tennessee in the near future.
Furthermore, TPP 4-Life, Inc is always on the lookout for like-minded organizations to partner with in achieving national change through youth development and empowerment.