Change people's lives at home and around the world
September 2016
Boxes of product at the LDS Bishop's Storehouse awaits humanitarian shipment to places in need around the world. Photos taken in Salt Lake City, Utah, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010. August Miller, Deseret News
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is widely known for the humanitarian services that it provides worldwide. Last month, during a lecture given at the University of Oxford, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church said that the Church spends around $40 million on humanitarian, welfare, and other charity projects, worldwide, each year. It has been doing that for the past 30 years. Also, volunteers from the Church devote millions of hours of labor each year to assist in the projects.
Elder Oaks further said that in 2015, the Church responded to 177 emergency situations in 56 countries. Apart from that, they also initiated a large number of projects that included providing clean water, vision care, and immunization, which actually impacted more than one million people. The Church provides these services without any regard to the religious affiliation of a person. Also, the humanitarian efforts of the Church are separate from the worldwide missionary efforts of the LDS Church.
(Continue reading at World Religion News)
Give to Humanitarian Aid
La Paz’s Departmental Legislative Assembly recently honored the Church for its ongoing tradition of charitable service both in the city and across the entire Andean nation. The award lauded the Church and its members “as an institution and living example of valued humanitarian aid.”
The First Presidency, the Church’s highest governing body, stated, “It is with great concern and compassion that we observe the plight of the millions of people around the world who have fled their homes seeking relief from civil conflict and other hardships."
Representatives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints addressed the role of the Church’s global humanitarian outreach efforts at a meeting at the United Nations in New York City on 27 February 2014. The gathering was part of the Focus on Faith series of the Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO) Relations and Advocacy Section of the U.N.’s Department of Public Information (DPI).