16 | September 25-26, 2021
General Conference Guide – Fall 2021
Church’s global welfare program focuses on service and self-reliance BY SARAH HARRIS Herald Correspondent
The year was 1936 and many in the United States, including members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were struggling amid the Great Depression. “There was obviously a great need,” said Gordon Carmen, the director of production and distribution in the church’s Welfare and Self-Reliance Services department. “Many, many people were unemployed. The economy was in trouble.” Members of stakes in Salt Lake City wondered what they could do to help. With stake presidents’ input, the church organized its welfare program locally under the direction of then-President Heber J. Grant. “It kind of blossomed and it grew over time that we wanted every stake really to have a welfare project — a bishops’ storehouse, a farm, a cannery, something like that that they could participate in the welfare program,” Carmen said. The program now serves people of all faiths across the world, aiming to care for those in need while promoting also self-reliance.
PHOTOS COURTESY INTELLECTUAL RESERVES
Funds known as fast offerings support significant welfare efforts of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, like these at the Bakery on Welfare Square in Salt Lake City. Now it appears that fasting may have health benefits, too.
GROWTH The subsequent years saw the advent of bishops’ storehouses, Welfare Square and Deseret Industries in Salt Lake City. The church later began operating other welfare facilities, including the Deseret Mill and Pasta Plant, as well as other processing plants throughout the U.S. and Canada. The welfare program now includes everything from dairies to gardens, canning and distributing many thousands of cases of vegetables each year through the bishops’ storehouse system, according to Carmen. Agreements with local grocery stores help where there aren’t bishops’ storehouses. “My stake, when I was a young man growing up, we had a cattle ranch, out in Fairfield, Utah,” Carmen said. “That still exists as part of a larger cattle ranch that we operate today, and it’s part of our Nephi livestock project.” Stakes’ individual projects helped the program grow immensely and remain part of the welfare program today. “We’re hoping that if the stake doesn’t have a welfare project that the members of that stake can and are involved in helping those in need in other ways, a humanitarian effort of some sort that could be done locally, supporting a local charity, something like that,” Carmen said.
