The Perpetual Education Fund: A Decade of Changing Lives
For the past 10 years, the Church’s Perpetual Education Fund has been offering Church members ages 18 to 30 the opportunity to continue their schooling, increase their skills, and improve their lives.
“[President Gordon B. Hinckley] ... figuratively held his prophetic mantle over the dark sea of poverty and initiated the PEF.” —Rex Allen, PEF volunteer director of training and communications
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This year the Perpetual Education Fund (PEF) celebrates 10 years of helping more than 46,000 Church members around the world improve their lives.
In 2001 President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008), then President of the Church, announced a “bold initiative” to help faithful young members of the Church in developing nations who were trapped in a cycle of poverty. He said:
“We shall call it the Perpetual Education Fund. … From the earnings of this fund, loans will be made to ambitious young men and women, for the most part returned missionaries, so that they may borrow money to attend school. Then when they qualify for employment, it is anticipated that they will return that which they have borrowed together with a small amount of interest designed as an incentive to repay the loan” (“The Perpetual Education Fund,” Liahona, July 2001, 60; Ensign, May 2001, 51).
The program is funded through contributions of Church members and others who support its mission.
“Long ago, Moses stretched his staff over the Red Sea, and the waters divided. President Hinckley mirrored this same faith when he figuratively held his prophetic mantle over the dark sea of poverty and initiated the PEF,” said Rex Allen, PEF’s volunteer director of training and communications, who has been involved in the program from the beginning.
Read more of this story on Newsroom.
