Liahona
What is Welfare & Self-Reliance?
March 2025

What is Welfare & Self-Reliance?

“Members of the Church strive to “bear one another’s burdens … and comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:8–9). Caring for those who have temporal needs is part of God’s work of salvation and exaltation. Self-reliance is the ability, commitment, and effort to provide the spiritual and temporal necessities of life for self and family.” - General Handbook 22.0

There are four areas in Welfare & Self-Reliance:

Immediate/Humanitarian Needs:

The Church contributes to relief efforts globally.  Your contributions provide numerous humanitarian projects.  Some recent projects:

  • 26,000+ water filtration systems in Türkiye

  • Repaired wheelchair facility in Romania

  • 120 electric hospital beds in Slovakia

  • 300 family greenhouses in Bosnia

  • Landslide cleanup in Switzerland

Preparedness:

Specialists at ward and stake levels form committees to help families prepare for emergencies regarding:

•Emergency Planning

•Home Storage and Production

•Financial Preparedness

•Emotional Preparedness

Education & Employment:

Facilitator-led workshops, as well as one-on-one assistance available. Some offerings include:

•Find a Better Job

•Personal Finance

•Starting and Growing a Business

•BYU Pathway, English Connect

•Education for Better Work

Emotional Health:

Family Services assists individuals prevent and overcome emotional challenges.

Several groups and classes are available:

•Strengthening the Family, Marriage

•Emotional Resilience

•Healing from Sexual Abuse (treatment)

•Anxiety & Depression (treatment)

•Pornography Use (treatment)

•Addiction Recovery (support group)

You can find all these tools and much more at LifeHelpEurope.org.

We will share more information about the work of the Welfare and Self-Reliance Services Department in the future.

“Self-reliance is a product of our work and undergirds all other welfare practices. It is an essential element in our spiritual as well as our temporal well-being. … ‘Let us work for what we need. Let us be self-reliant and independent. Salvation can be obtained on no other principle. Salvation is an individual matter, and we must work out our own salvation in temporal as well as in spiritual things.’”

President Thomas S. Monson