Perpetual Education Fund
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Perpetual Education Fund (PEF) is a program of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...
(LDS Church), first announced by church president Gordon B. Hinckley on March 31, 2001. The mission of the PEF, as stated in that address, is to provide educational opportunity (not welfare support) to members living in areas with widespread poverty, enabling and empowering them to lift themselves and establish their future lives on the foundation of self-reliance that can come from training in marketable skills. This program reflects the values and stated aims of the church around the importance of education and the duty to help and assist the poor. Anyone may donate.


History

The LDS Church has made similar efforts in the past to provide for the temporal needs of its members. The program is modeled after the Perpetual Emigration Fund, which provided
loan In finance, a loan is the tender of money by one party to another with an agreement to pay it back. The recipient, or borrower, incurs a debt and is usually required to pay interest for the use of the money. The document evidencing the deb ...
s to more than 40,000 19th-century
Latter-day Saint The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded b ...
immigrants looking to settle in the
Salt Lake Valley Salt Lake Valley is a valley in Salt Lake County, Utah, Salt Lake County in the north-central portion of the U.S. state of Utah. It contains Salt Lake City, Utah, Salt Lake City and many of its suburbs, notably Murray, Utah, Murray, Sandy, Uta ...
, but lacking the funds to do so. In 1903, the church established a fund to provide aspiring school teachers with loans for school expenses. A related effort, not specifically targeting education, began in 1936, when church president Heber J. Grant set up a welfare system in order to provide a means for people to earn a living during the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
.


Operation and administration

The Perpetual Education Fund functions as an endowment, meaning that all loans are made from interest, while the
corpus Corpus (plural ''corpora'') is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of ...
(or body of the fund) remains intact. All donations made to the fund go to the fund corpus. Anyone may donate to the PEF, regardless of affiliation with the LDS Church, and donations have been made by members and non-members alike. Because the program is administered through the LDS Church, all donations go directly toward the loans. The executive director of the PEF from its inception through September 2012 was former general authority and
Church Historian Church history or ecclesiastical history as an academic discipline studies the history of Christianity and the way the Christian Church has developed since its inception. Henry Melvill Gwatkin defined church history as "the spiritual side of th ...
John K. Carmack, with Richard E. Cook, another former general authority, as the managing director. In September 2012, the church's
First Presidency Among many churches in the Latter Day Saint movement, the First Presidency (also known as the Quorum of the Presidency of the Church) is the highest presiding or governing body. Present-day denominations of the movement led by a First Presidency ...
announced Robert C. Gay, of the First Quorum of the Seventy, as the new chairman of the fund. The Perpetual Education Fund provides loans to members of the LDS Church seeking additional education, mainly through
vocational school A vocational school (alternatively known as a trade school, or technical school), is a type of educational institution, which, depending on the country, may refer to either secondary education#List of tech ed skills, secondary or post-secondar ...
and technical training. In connection with the more recent PEF-B program, (and for those already part of the International Education Fund program) opportunities for
university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...
education are also available. In 2005, career training options requested included: school teacher, network administrator, computer science, systems analyst, human resource specialist, flight attendant, managerial, clinical lab technician, computer support technician, university faculty, political analyst, physician's assistant, physical and corrective therapy assistant, lawyer and judge.The Deseret Morning News
/ref> Potential loan recipients first complete a short training program on personal finance, budgeting and career planning and work with a loan administrator to select viable vocational and educational options for their particular region. Recipients are encouraged to work, if possible, during their schooling to provide for their own living expenses. Loans for tuition and fees are paid directly by the fund to the educational institution, further reducing the potential for mismanagement.
/ref> During the course of the loan, recipients make small, manageable payments and participate in regular progress reviews. PEF loans average about $800 and the average training program of a Perpetual Education Fund loan recipient lasts 2.6 years. More substantial payments on the loan begin 90 days after graduation and the loans are usually scheduled to be paid off, with a modest 3-4% interest, over the course of 2–6 years. Recipients are also encouraged to make further contributions to the fund as their circumstances allow. Loan repayments and subsequent donations are channeled back into the fund corpus, making it a truly "perpetual" resource.


Progress

Less than 18 months after its inception, the PEF had disbursed more than 5,000 loans.Mormon Times from the Deseret Morning News
/ref> Within three years (2004), approximately 10,000 young adults had received loans from the fund. By 2007, the numbers had climbed to 27,000 students in 39 different countries, and in late 2009, it was announced that over 40,000 people had received loans through the program. The Perpetual Education Fund has made loans to students in more than 40 countries, including
Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...
,
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
,
Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
,
Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...
,
Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
,
Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...
,
Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
, the
Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
,
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
,
Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...
,
Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...
,
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
,
Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...
, and
Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
. Starting in 2023, church members who specified the PEF as a donation recipient on their donation slips were told the fund was no longer accepting donations.


See also

* Indian Placement Program * LDS Philanthropies


References


External links


Perpetual Education Fund - LDS PhilanthropiesPerpetual Education Fund Website
* Tad Walch

'' Deseret Morning News'', 2007-04-03
The Perpetual Education Fund
{{Latter-day Saints Church Educational System Education finance in the United States Educational charities based in the United States Young people and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Projects established in 2001 2001 in Christianity 21st-century Mormonism