The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is putting serious money behind child nutrition, announcing Wednesday that it will commit $25 million to UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Fund to help prevent and treat malnutrition among mothers and young children worldwide. Because the gift qualifies for a Bezos family matching challenge, the total impact from this round is expected to reach roughly $50 million, supporting breastfeeding counseling, micronutrient supplements and efforts to spot and treat wasting early. Church leaders said the funding will back programs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines and Sierra Leone, with the partnership intended to reach millions of women and children by 2030.
How the funds will be spent
According to The Church of Jesus Christ Newsroom, the entire $25 million contribution is earmarked for UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Fund to boost breastfeeding support, encourage healthy diets, provide key micronutrients and ramp up early detection and treatment of life threatening malnutrition. Church officials present the donation as part of a broader humanitarian push and a multiyear emphasis on maternal and child nutrition. They also link the announcement to the Church’s 2025 Caring Report, which catalogs large scale humanitarian spending and volunteer work around the globe.
Match challenge and partners
Per the Child Nutrition Fund, donations to the CNF are currently being boosted by a matching challenge launched in 2025 by the Bezos family, a mechanism that can unlock significant extra dollars for nutrition programs. In practice, that means the Church’s $25 million will trigger another $25 million through the match, pushing the immediate impact to about $50 million and feeding into CNF’s broader goal of reaching up to 320 million children and women each year by 2030. The fund is partnering with governments and major philanthropies to scale up both emergency nutrition responses and longer term health system investments in high need countries.
Leaders weigh in
Presiding Bishop W. Christopher Waddell said the gift “reflects shared values and a commitment to care for those in need,” casting the donation as a straightforward extension of the Church’s faith driven humanitarian work. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell is quoted in the same release calling the contribution one that “comes at a critical time” and saying it will help deliver lifesaving nutrition to millions of children and women, according to The Church of Jesus Christ Newsroom. Relief Society General President Camille N. Johnson emphasized the organization’s 2023 focus on maternal and child nutrition as context for the new commitment.
Why it matters
Global numbers hint at the scale of the crisis the CNF is trying to chip away at. Recent UN and UNICEF figures estimate that about 150 million children are stunted and roughly 40 to 45 million are wasted, conditions that raise the risk of illness and death, according to UNICEF and UN data. The Child Nutrition Fund’s strategy to expand prevention, detection and treatment is designed to bring those risks down by combining immediate help with investments that shore up local health systems. Observers say that when institutional donors, faith based groups and large matching challenges line up, even smaller individual contributions can end up punching above their weight in both emergency responses and longer term nutrition programs.
