Mormon Helping Hands

Mormon Helping Hands (or, more recently, simply Helping Hands) is a name under which members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) perform volunteer community service. The name and its logo are worn on t-shirts and vests worn by LDS Church members while providing the service. The shirts and vests are bright yellow or white.

Volunteers wearing yellow Mormon Helping Hands shirts and vests help clear thousands of used sand bags from a Moorhead, Minnesota property on April 25, 2009. Mike Moore/Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The logos were used in 1992 in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew ravaged the city of Homestead and other parts of Miami-Dade County, Florida. [1] The Church officially established the program in 1998[2] in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile to identify service being done by members of the LDS Church. That same year it was implemented on a large scale in Brazil as part of a country-wide day of service organized by the church. It has since been used in many countries.[3]

Mormon Helping Hands operates under the direction of local stake and district presidents and bishops. The activities are meant to provide community service and are not proselytizing in nature.

Mormon Helping Hands both responds to disasters such as hurricanes[4] and gives aid aimed at improving conditions caused by long-standing problems such as deterioration of parks that lack proper upkeep.[5] The Helping Hand Mormons, as of 2017, were asked to, as the name applies, help out with the cleanup of Hurricane Harvey and were featured on the news.

See also

Notes
  1. "Hurricane andrew: LDS volunteers join clean-up effort amid vast destruction", Church News, September 5, 1992
  2. "Mormon Helping Hands Completes First Decade of Service", Ensign, January 2009
  3. Zavoral, Gary (May 5, 2010), "10,000 to Give Helping Hands to Distressed Sacramento-area Parks on Saturday", Sacramento Press, archived from the original on October 22, 2011, retrieved March 1, 2012
  4. Mustac, Frank (December 21, 2011), "Mormon Helping Hands from Clinton Township lightens the load of post-storm cleanup", The Hunterdon County Democrat
  5. "Mormon Helping Hands to deploy nearly one million volunteers Saturday to beautify state parks", Merced Sun-Star, May 6, 2010
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