“Now, it came to pass that when I had heard these words I began to feel a desire for the welfare of my brethren, the Nephites; wherefore, I did pour out my whole soul unto God for them.” (Enos 1:9)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prides itself on its charitable efforts, from crisis response to welfare support. Relief Society, our women’s organization, even has “Charity never faileth” as its motto. Many members have conflicted feelings about the Church’s charity work, in part due to the institution’s lack of financial transparency. But one program I’ve loved for as long as I’ve known about it is the Perpetual Education Fund (PEF). As the Church website PEF page states, “The Perpetual Education Fund (PEF) loan program helps members of the Church of all ages get an education that leads to a self-reliant job. Since 2001 this program has touched the lives of more than 90,000 individuals around the world. Through loan repayments and generous donations, this fund will continue to lift individuals and families out of poverty and into self-reliance for decades to come.”

Although the PEF program isn’t perfect, it’s a powerful tool for helping some members living in poverty secure an otherwise inaccessible education and work. It covers the cost of tuition and fees for technical and vocational programs for up to two years. The loans are designed to be repayable in five years, replenishing the reserves for future generations.

Former President Gordon B. Hinckley established PEF, inspired by the Perpetual Emigration Fund historically used to assist members who wished to immigrate to the United States and gather in the west. Although his 2001 talk announcing PEF includes cringeworthy elements (such as suggesting that returned missionaries from poorer countries have “no skills” and “limited abilities”), it also includes beautiful parts like “It is our solemn obligation, it is our certain responsibility, my brethren, to “succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees” (D&C 81:5)…I believe the Lord does not wish to see His people condemned to live in poverty. I believe He would have the faithful enjoy the good things of the earth. He would have us do these things to help them.”

I saw the impact PEF could have on members’ lives firsthand when I lived in Kenya, and I was dismayed to hear around 2017 there that it was being eliminated. I mentioned this in an international LDS group recently, however, and was surprised and delighted to hear from someone currently in Kenya serving as a Self-Reliance Specialist that PEF is alive and well there.

Yet far from finding the matter settled, I only became more confused the more I tried to check in on the status of PEF. The Church no longer accepts online donations to PEF and allows contributions only from wards and branches. The PEF website explains the reason for this is that “[t]he generosity of donors has led to sufficient levels of donated funds to the Perpetual Education Fund”; however, I don’t understand how that’s possible when so many members of my ward in Nairobi had to drop out of school due to an inability to pay school fees. In 2017, there was speculation that the Church’s BYU-Idaho Pathways online program would replace PEF. According to BYU’s The Daily Universe, Clark Gilbert, Pathways director and former BYU-Idaho President said, “officials have been looking at the possibility of making the Perpetual Education Fund a resource for those hoping to get an education through Pathway, which is also subsidized by the LDS Church.”

The same article notes, “Some students who do not wish to attend an LDS Church-sponsored university but still require assistance to fund their education can look into the Perpetual Education Fund as a possibility.” That was exactly my fear if PEF was phased out for Pathways: that poor Church members would have no other option than a Church-sanctioned and -provided education. As he understood when the Church launched PEF, President Hinckley argued that local schools would best be able to match local labor demands and give students the practical skills needed to secure stable work and have the best chance to move out of poverty. Shouldn’t poor students get to choose the education that is best for them, whether that’s Pathways or a local school made affordable by PEF? For me as an adult convert where Mormons are a small minority, I am also concerned about the lost opportunity for members to engage with non-members, share the gospel with those who are ready and waiting to hear it, and learn from others with different beliefs.

Soon after my exchange with the Self-Reliance Specialist in Kenya, a service missionary in the Caribbean chimed in our group to say that she was told PEF is being phased out imminently worldwide. Several of us went back and forth with possible explanations, including that areas were phasing the program out at different speeds. But we recognize that every theory is mostly speculation in the absence of any official communication or guidance from the handbook. Here I had two people, both called by the Church to support the self-reliance of its members, contradicting each other on whether the self-reliance program today includes PEF or not.

Of course, someone also added to our conversation that we were all wrong to ask questions about the program at all and that we should accept whatever our local leaders told us, because digging deeper would be doubting the Lord’s appointment of those servants. On the contrary, I think asking our leaders to be the best stewards of the Lord’s Church and its resources they can be is worthy, spiritual work. The better we can use our charity resources, the more lives we can bless and the more burdens we can lighten as we are instructed to do in Mosiah 18:8-9. So if you know what happened to PEF, please let me know in the comments! And in the meantime, I’ll keep pushing for greater transparency and charity from my Church so that hopefully we can maximize spiritual and temporal uplift (and prevent future members from being quite as baffled as me).