SALT LAKE CITY — The announcement electrified an increasingly global LDS Church.

In 2001, President Gordon B. Hinckley said the church would remake the concept of the old Perpetual Emigration Fund. What once helped early Mormon pioneers cross the Plains was repurposed as a Perpetual Education Fund to lift modern Mormon pioneers out of poverty around the world.

The announcement was a bombshell. The fund is a triumph. It has provided revolving loans for the vocational or higher education of 83,260 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nearly 90 percent find jobs upon graduation. A significant percentage of local church leaders in international congregations now come from the ranks of PEF graduates.

Still, the fund couldn't grow fast enough, no matter how enormous the fund's impact had on church members between the ages of 18 and 30. The need for training and skills for Mormons of all ages was too vast. More than two-thirds of LDS Church members outside the United States and Canada live in places where, even with education and training, jobs are scarce.

So in 2012, after a comprehensive review of the Perpetual Education Fund, President Thomas S. Monson authorized a dramatic expansion of his predecessor's concepts by combining it with other efforts under the title Self-Reliance Services.

Exponential growth

Self-Reliance Services can reach many, many more and far faster than its forerunners. The Perpetual Emigration Fund helped 30,000 poor Mormon pioneers cross the Plains during 38 years, from 1849 to 1887. On average, the Perpetual Education Fund in its first 15 years provided more than 5,000 new loans each year.

Self-Reliance Services is at least 20 times larger.

"We helped over 100,000 people make advances in jobs and education and in starting and growing businesses" in 2015 alone, Elder Robert C. Gay of the Seventy told KSL-TV earlier this year. Gay, a former managing director at Bain Capital, is chairman of the Self-Reliance Services/Perpetual Education Fund Committee.

Last year alone, through the combined effort, more than 67,000 Mormons started or improved a business, nearly 22,000 enrolled in a training program or school, and more than 14,000 obtained a new or better job.

The future potential is vast. Last year, more than 246,000 people completed a self-assessment as part of the new, expanded program. The assessment is the entry point to the program and is found in the new manual, "My Path to Self-Reliance."

Elder Gay led a comprehensive, international review of the PEF in 2012 that resulted in the recommendation to broaden the program beyond education. The church quickly established Self-Reliance Centers in more than 122 countries. Today, more than half of international LDS stake centers have a Self-Reliance Center, often paired with an existing Family History Center.

"Self-employment and accelerated job search were added as options (to the PEF) to offer more routes to self-reliance according to the situation and preference of members," Elder Joseph W. Sitati of the Seventy said.

Impressive results

The implementation of the broadened programs began in late 2014, and the results are dramatic.

For example, a survey of nine African countries found that the number of Mormons setting aside money for savings leaped by 106 percent after they graduated from 12 weeks of self-reliance training. The number who were debt free jumped 38 percent. The number taking the sacrament weekly rose 32 percent. The survey also found that tithe-paying jumped 14 percent and temple worthiness increased 11 percent, according to a talk by Elder Sitati.

President Hinckley's original vision for the Perpetual Education Fund was rooted in lifting church members to self-reliance. Self-Reliance Services combines his passion for education and his care for the individual, his daughter Virginia Hinckley Pearce said in an hour-long KSL-TV special, "A Pathway out of Poverty."

"It is a vibrant, living program," Pearce said. "Sometimes you put in place something that stays where it is and maintain it, but this one is developing and evolving in ways that are really remarkable."

The self-reliance program first asks members to assess their needs and set self-reliant income and spiritual goals. Next, they choose a path to self-reliance. Finally, they join a group in one of three tracks that helps them develop practical skills and spiritual habits in 90 days.

Self-Reliance Centers provide free courses in the three tracks — "Starting and Growing My Own Business," "My Job Search" and "Education for Better Work." The manuals can be found on lds.org, along with numerous videos supporting each manual; the centers include internet access. The manuals are translated into 33 languages. Courses are provided in council settings rather than classrooms, so they are called groups. Group meetings are facilitated by local volunteers and church service missionaries who act as peer mentors.

Once participants graduate, the church asks them to continue to work toward self-reliance and to serve others and help them progress.

As of June, the church had facilitated 26,705 self-reliance groups in the previous 18 months.

One example

The deadliest typhoon on record in the Philippines struck on Nov. 8, 2013. Typhoon Haiyan killed more than 6,100, injured 28,000 and displaced 4.1 million.

Amid all the need for relief, local LDS leaders saw an early opportunity to deploy Self-Reliance Services principles and resources.

"We thought, 'How do you teach self-reliance to a people who were ravaged by a perfect storm?'" said Tony San Gabriel, the LDS Church's area manager for self-reliance in the Philippines.

In addition to providing relief, the church immediately began to help members rebuild, restore and retool. They began by helping the some 3,000 members who lost homes in the disaster rebuild.

Working with the local Self-Reliance Center and with the Perpetual Education Fund, local members entered a church-sponsored vocational program training them as carpenters. The church also helped them obtain basic tools. Each trainee built his or her own house — about 12 feet by 12 feet in dimension — and nine more homes. Then they received a trade certificate that helped them qualify for some of the 250,000 construction jobs available in the area.

"We married the opportunity for livelihood and the need for shelter," San Gabriel said.

Coming to U.S.

So far, the church has installed the program only in international congregations, but leaders consider it a universal principle. President Monson called self-reliance "an essential element in our spiritual as well as our temporal well-being."

The church defines self-reliance as "the ability, commitment and effort to provide the spiritual and temporal necessities of life for self and family."

Church leaders are piloting a program for the United States and Canada, according to KSL. Meanwhile, all of the self-reliance materials are available on lds.org and the LDS Gospel Library app.

In August, the U.S.-based LDS magazine "Ensign" published a two-page self-reliance checklist that asked the question, "Are you becoming more self-reliant each day?" The checklist surveyed five areas — education, employment, finances, physical health and preparedness.

President Hinckley predicted that Perpetual Education Fund beneficiaries would grow individually and strengthen the church.

"As faithful members of the church," he said, "they will pay their tithes and offerings, and the church will be much the stronger for their presence in the areas where they live."

That is happening with graduates of Self-Reliance Services groups, Elder Gay told KSL.

"(They made) vast improvements in paying tithes and offerings, being temple worthy, feeling the Spirit in their lives, reading the scriptures and saying their prayers daily. So we're seeing the effects on both sides of their lives, and what we're trying to develop is the whole individual."

Fund's legacy

Self-Reliance Services absorbed the Perpetual Education Fund, and it now is its own church department.

The evolution and expansion of the fund as part of Self-Reliance Services fits President Hinckley's original vision.

The fund, he said in 2001, "will deal with down-to-earth skills and needed fields of expertise."

Today, PEF loans are approved for programs and schools on the PEF Preferred List, a list of good jobs in an applicant's area and the local programs and schools that will lead to these jobs. The list ensures applicants acquire skills and training in demand in the local economy.

The latest available statistics show that the average length of schooling for a PEF participant is 2.4 years, and the average graduation rate is nearly 70 percent, compared to a 35 percent to 55 percent rate for most colleges in the United States. Average cost per participant per year was $1,900.

Loans are made to students in 69 countries.

Email: twalch@deseretnews.com