Mothers and babies died in childbirth so often in frontier Utah that Female Relief Society President Eliza R. Snow called to action the women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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In 1872, she led a successful effort to recruit young women with “nerve, energy and ambition” to seek medical degrees in the East.
In 1921, one of her successors launched another campaign to better healthcare to mothers and infants in rural areas. Soon, Utah had one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the nation.
Today, another Relief Society president leads an innovative $119.2 million international project to support the health and development of children under 5 and their mothers in a dozen nations.
“Of course we should be providing maternal and newborn care now,” President Camille N. Johnson said. “We’re focused on women’s leadership, women’s self-reliance and maternal and newborn care, which has always been the pattern of Relief Society.”
She has helped to pioneer a new strategy at the core of the Caring for Women and Children Global Initiative launched in 2023 in Africa, Asia and Central America.
The idea? Organize eight international charities — including Latter-day Saint Charities — into subgroups to leverage the experience and relationships each already had. There was also hope the collaborations would spark synergy, efficiency and effectiveness, President Johnson said.
“The locations are places where the governments are engaged and anxious to lift and bless their people,” she said. “So we go into those places, we organize these groups into small consortias and you see three or four of them working together on child nutrition or better agricultural practices for women, for example.”
It’s the kind of innovation that made it fitting that President Johnson served Friday as the grand marshal of the Days of ‘47 Parade, which marks the arrival of the first Latter-day Saint pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.
The Relief Society’s global initiative launched with $44 million in 2023. Funding expanded by $11.8 million in 2024. Those funds provided help to 2.7 million women and more than 12 million children.
President Johnson announced an additional $63.4 million last year.
The money became more important to the charities when the Trump administration shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025, she said.
She said the Church of Jesus Christ is unique because it doesn’t draw on government dollars.
“We’re asking the charities to go about their work in a different way so that the available money goes farther,” President Johnson said. “We’ve asked them to cross-share information. They didn’t used to work like this. They were really siloed. They’re starting to see that it works.
“I describe it as one plus one suddenly feels like three instead of just two, because they’re sharing information.”
For example, Vitamin Angels has one expertise and Catholic Relief Services has another. Together, one nongovernmental organization may find that the hard work it did with a government to provide clean water also could provide vitamins to those who need them.
“If two charities work in isolation, the job won’t get done as efficiently,” President Johnson said. “It’s changing how these NGOs work. It’s the church, it’s the NGOs and it’s the governments working together.”
The Relief Society and the church’s Humanitarian Services department set specific markers for the charities to meet.
“We are evaluating those markers to make sure that the dollars are well spent,” President Johnson said. “We’ve had our challenges. It hasn’t been perfect, smooth sailing, but this has been really innovative.”
The seven charities collaborating with the church are CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, Helen Keller International, the Hunger Project, iDE (International Development Enterprises), Save the Children and Vitamin Angels.
President Johnson gave credit to other women who created long-time relationships with those charities on behalf of the church. Those women also helped develop the new strategy, including Sharon Eubank, who recently retired, and her successor as director of Humanitarian Services, Elissa Gifford.
President Johnson leads 8 million women in the Relief Society and travels the world to minister to them and meet with government leaders, not unlike President Snow did 150 years ago.
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She brings legal and leadership experience to her role after working as an attorney and head of a law firm. Her chair on the church’s Welfare and Self-Reliance executive committee maintains the tie between the society’s work and the faith’s humanitarian efforts.
She says it is obvious that investing in children is investing in the future, but she said investing in a woman also comes with significant leverage.
“When you educate a woman, when you provide her with information, knowledge, education and resources, she shares what she knows,” she said. “Women share it all with their children and it benefits their children and the whole family, but they also share with other women and with their communities.”
President Johnson watched it happen during a UNICEF trip to Uganda in 2023. Women gathered at a community health fair under a tree to learn about child nutrition, how to assess malnourishment, how to protect against mosquito-borne illnesses. Then they went hut to hut on foot to share that information.
“The Relief Society’s responsibility to provide temporal relief has always meant a responsibility on the part of the sisters to identify needs in their communities and then satisfy them,” she said. “As the church has grown internationally, that responsibility has become an international one.”
President Johnson said the Relief Society doesn’t leave out men, either.
“We just know how we can best affect and impact men,” she said, “and it’s through the women. Women’s self-empowerment and community development are certainly going to be areas we continue to address.”
Investing in women is also an investment in their hope, she said. She said they have a tenacity in their faith in Jesus Christ.
“Women hope for healthy babies,” she said in a social media post after a fundraising concert at the Hollywood Bowl by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. “They hope for information and education, they hope for their families to be free of disease, they hope for clean water and appropriate nutrition, they hope for the well-being of their children.”
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President Johnson, who received a Sundance leadership award in 2025, has broad responsibilities.
She is a member of the church’s Priesthood and Family executive council and sits on the church Board of Education that oversees Brigham Young University, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, BYU-Pathway Worldwide and Ensign College.
She also offers her voice on two organizing committees, one for the Salt Lake Temple open house celebration in 2027 and another for the church’s bicentennial in 2030.
“A lawyer’s work is to persuade and solve problems, to see both sides of a case and to think objectively, analytically and strategically,” she said. “I see myself as a problem solver. That skill has transferred beautifully to my work.”
One of her biggest goals is to promote peace and the natural peacemaking power of women, she said.
“I hope our sisters feel a sense of belonging,” she said. “I want them to know they are a part of something that really matters, that’s bringing relief to people everywhere. You’re part of the greatest cause.”
She noted that Joseph Smith organized the Relief Society in 1842 with a charge to “be at peace with the Lord, with those around them, and with themselves.”
President Johnson, the mother of three sons and a grandmother to eight, said that peace is vital to helping women and children.
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“If you’re in a place where there’s never peace, it’s hard to manage child nutrition,” she said.
Women’s leadership can help provide peace.
“Women don’t always get to be at the table, and then peace comes a little more slowly,” she said. “Leaders forget about the needs of women and children if they’re not represented there at the table where peacemaking is made.”
She has discovered the secret power of the Relief Society, she said.
“They way I receive relief myself is by providing it,” she said. “When we assemble to bring relief to others, we find relief in that service.”
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