LDS Church ups its game in global humanitarian outreach — with a lot of help from its friends

Last year, the top women’s leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a global initiative — and a hefty $55.8 million donation as seed money — to improve the health and nutrition of women and children worldwide.

This year, General Relief Society President Camille Johnson, her board and the church’s humanitarian wing, led by Sharon Eubank, came up with what they saw as an effective innovation.

Instead of doling out donations to diverse international aid agencies, why not use church funds and organizing skills to unite handfuls of these groups into a consortium of helpers?

They then did just that.

On Thursday, representatives of eight such aid groups who have agreed to join this alliance met in Salt Lake City to report and discuss program results.

The Utah-based church supports “thousands of projects that aid those in need, regardless of race, gender, nationality or religious affiliation,” Todd Budge, second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, which oversees the faith’s finances, told the assembled humanitarian leaders. “It’s just a part of our DNA as a church.”

Bringing them together was “our first time to take this approach, and we’re excited,” Budge said. “And we’ve felt their excitement and passion about working together cooperatively.”

Johnson then announced that the church would be giving $63.4 million to the effort in 2025.

“We look forward to brighter futures for these women and children,” she told the group meeting in the Relief Society Building on downtown’s Temple Square, “as we collaborate collectively in lifting and serving and blessing their lives.”

By creating this group, Johnson said in an interview, the church “hopes that the money will go where we want it to go and reach the beneficiaries we want to help. We want women and children with vitamins. We want children screened for malnutrition and treated.”

Latter-day Saints approached these global organizations and asked, “Do you want to join us?” she said. “And so they’ve self-formed into this consortium, and we’re working in 12 high-need countries, places where we think the governments are most apt to actually pick up some of this.”

Being a part of this consortium “is not only important because we have those shared values, and we have a vision for a future together where every child, every woman should have the right to live and healthy life,” Sarah Bouchie, president and CEO of Helen Keller Intl, said during a panel discussion, “but we also have the opportunity to be able to learn from each other’s skill sets.”

Besides Hellen Keller Intl, the groups include CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, iDE, MAP International, Save the Children, The Hunger Project and Vitamin Angels.

They will be operating in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Zambia.

In 2024, their combined outreach:

• Gave 21.2 million children and mothers vitamins.

• Screened 1.87 million children for malnutrition.

• Trained 1.6 million mothers on best nutrition practices.

• Administered prenatal care 219,000 pregnant women.

• Supplied 141,000 families with seeds, training or home gardens that yield nutrient-dense foods.

• Provided 6,800 people with improved water and sanitation facilities.

• Resuscitated 159 newborns.

What’s religion got to do with it?

There is a doctrinal reason for this work, Eubank said. “Any student of the New Testament knows that Jesus broke a lot of cultural traditions and reached out to women in a way that they hadn’t been reached out to before. And he also said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’”

It also is, she said, pragmatic.

When pioneers came to Utah, and “the infant mortality rate was high and the maternal death rate was high,” Eubank said, they had to figure out “what to do.”

Church leaders sent women “back East” to go “to medical school, and then they came back here,” she said. “They started hospital systems, and they taught midwives.”

All of that experience “is a practical underpinning for what we’re trying to do now, but there are only some things that a church can do,” Eubank said. “We need other partners to be able to bring their expertise, working with governments, helping in cultures where we don’t have experience. …. Instead of competing for funds the way we always have done in humanitarian grants … We decided we would fund a coalition. We allowed people to choose their own coalitions … find people that have strengths where you might not have strengths, and become holistic.”

Women are “the cornerstones of society,” said Abena Amedormey, director of Catholic Relief Services in Ghana. “When you train a woman, you train a nation; when you support a woman, you support a nation, because she is a multiplier of that intervention.”

The Ghanaian said the Catholic organization was pleased to join with “consortium partners” to contribute to “supporting women and children.”

What about closer to home?

“I’m in a space right now where I have a global view,” Johnson said. “But there are kids in Salt Lake City [and every community] with malnutrition needs and literacy needs. So whether we have the chance to travel the world and do hands-on work in Africa or Asia, or whether the work we do is just here in our own community, it’s equally important.”

Why not utilize the nearly 8 million women of the church’s Relief Society like the other humanitarian groups?

The Relief Society has not given any specific directive to its members, she said, taking a more do-it-yourself rather than a collective approach.

It has posted a list of 25 ways members can get involved in fighting malnutrition.

“We hope that women will be inspired,” Johnson said, “to know what they can do in their own communities.”