We Will Not Let You Go Hungry

"A few decades later the world groaned under the burden of the Great Depression. It was during that time, on April 6, 1936, that President Heber J. Grant and his counselors, J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay, announced what would later become known as the welfare program of the Church. Interestingly, two weeks later Elder Melvin J. Ballard was appointed as its first chairman and Harold B. Lee its first managing director.

This was no ordinary endeavor. Although the Lord had raised up remarkable souls to administer it, President J. Reuben Clark made it clear that “the setting up of the [welfare] machinery is the result of a revelation by the Holy Ghost to President Grant, that it has been carried on since that time by equivalent revelations which have come to the brethren who have had it in charge.”²

The commitment of Church leaders to relieve human suffering was as certain as it was irrevocable. President Grant wanted “a system that would … reach out and take care of the people no matter what the cost.” He said he would even go so far as to “close the seminaries, shut down missionary work for a period of time, or even close the temples, but they would not let the people go hungry.”³

I was at President Gordon B. Hinckley’s side in Managua, Nicaragua, when he spoke to 1,300 members of the Church who had survived a devastating hurricane that claimed more than 11,000 lives. “As long as the Church has resources,” he said to them, “we will not let you go hungry or without clothing or without shelter. We shall do all that we can to assist in the way that the Lord has designated that it should be done.”⁴

One of the distinguishing characteristics of this inspired gospel-centered endeavor is its emphasis on personal responsibility and self-reliance. President Marion G. Romney explained: “Many programs have been set up by well-meaning individuals to aid those who are in need. However, many of these programs are designed with the shortsighted objective of ‘helping people,’ as opposed to ‘helping people help themselves.’”⁵

^{Bishop Burton, April Conference 2010}