2021
Humanitarian Efforts Bring Relief
May 2021

Humanitarian Efforts Bring Relief

The Church continues efforts to assist those in need throughout the world and to provide humanitarian relief during times of crisis.

In the largest humanitarian relief effort in Church history, Latter-day Saint Charities (the humanitarian arm of the Church) has helped many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing funds and supplies to help with the prevention and treatment of the disease. The effort has also provided commodities and training for health-care professionals, including guidance on how to offer physical, mental, and emotional support.

The Church’s canneries and food-processing plants have adjusted to meet increased needs, making products and goods available as needed to Church leaders, community agencies, school feeding programs, food banks, and other organizations that have partnered with the Church, including governments, international nongovernmental organizations, and other humanitarian groups. To date, Latter-day Saint Charities has supported 1,050 COVID-19 relief projects in 152 countries.

Since the last general conference, Latter-day Saint Charities and regional and local leaders of the Church have:

  • Organized Helping Hand volunteers and relief efforts after three hurricanes struck the US Gulf Coast from southeast Texas to the Florida panhandle.

  • Worked with partners and coordinated with local Church leaders to provide relief after typhoons hit the Philippines. Forty Church meetinghouses were used as evacuation centers.

  • Come to the aid of wildfire victims in 23 stakes in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, USA.

  • Worked with a partner to provide 180 tons of food to help people in need in Wyoming, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, South Carolina, Colorado, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, USA.

  • Given US $1 million to the Salvation Army to support food distribution in more than 150 locations throughout the United States.

  • Donated food to 200 local food pantries in New York, USA.

  • Delivered 37,500 pounds of clothing and 171,168 pounds of food to Honduras, working with government and community leaders to provide aid to survivors following two hurricanes.

  • Helped to fund programs that will provide 30 million meals for schools in nine countries in Africa.

  • Sponsored 200 blood drives across 14 states in the Church’s North America Central Area.

  • Donated more than US $200,000 for personal protective gear for medical professionals and masks for school children in Botswana. Eleven local Church congregations collectively sewed 8,000 masks to help the effort.

  • Committed a US $20-million grant in support of the global COVID-19 response of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), which will help provide vaccinations to 196 countries.

  • Delivered 790,400 pounds of food; 17,000 cases of water; mattresses, and other supplies to those in need in Texas and Oklahoma following severe winter storms.