Evening of Service

Stories of Service

We want to hear about YOUR experiences with service and the profound effects they have had! You can share:

• a memory of participating in a BYU Women's Conference service project
• photos, video, audio, or written accounts of your service experience
• a recent opportunity you have had to lift those around you
• a time when you were the recipient of meaningful service

​Share Your Story

• Read our Service History.
• View our Project Tutorials.
• Visit our Sharing Stations archives.
• View our 2021 service broadcast on our YouTube channel.

We hope this resource will be helpful to you as you plan service activities to meet needs in your own community. These free project tutorials are based on projects completed at past BYU Women’s Conference events. We encourage you to use and share them as a means of completing service projects or for personal use. You may not use these tutorials for commercial purposes. View available project tutorials below.

Looking for a project you’ve seen at BYU Women’s Conference? We will continue to add to this library as additional tutorials become available, so check back often.

Additional project ideas can be found on our Pinterest boards. If you would like to share a pattern or tutorial you have created or for which you own rights, please email wcservice@byu.edu.

By first observing the needs around us, we can better serve our brothers and sisters.

Before selecting service projects, we are encouraged to first observe, then serve. Sister Linda K. Burton taught:

“Sometimes we are tempted to serve in a way that we want to serve and not necessarily in the way that is needed at the moment. When Elder Robert D. Hales taught the principle of provident living, he shared the example of buying a gift for his wife. She asked, “Are you buying this for me or for you? ” If we adapt that question to ourselves as we serve and ask, “Am I doing this for the Savior, or am I doing this for me?” our service will more likely resemble the ministry of the Savior. The Savior asked, and so should we, “What will ye that I shall do unto you?”

The following resources may help you in your efforts to identify opportunities to serve those around you in meaningful ways.

BYU Women’s Conference attendees have been building a tremendous spiritual legacy through service, blessing the lives of those participating and countless members of our local community for twenty four years. Each year, an army of dedicated women seek to “first observe, then serve” as we identify and then strive to meet critical local needs. In partnership with Latter-day Saint Charities and local hospitals, homeless shelters, schools, assisted living centers, crisis nurseries, and other agencies, our projects offer significant help to those battling homelessness, hunger, addiction, abuse, illness, loss, loneliness, and so much more. This labor of love highlights the extraordinary goodness of the Relief Society sisters and the capacity we have to be a force for good in the world. Since 1999 more than a million+ items made at BYU Women's Conference have been sent across the state/world, as we focus on serving at the conference.

Each year about 1,200 volunteer team members complete all the necessary pre-conference work (cutting, sewing, hemstitching, organizing, and setting up kits items, etc.) and supervise 12 to 20 different projects during the conference. “Take, Make, and Return” kits were distributed at the Marriott Center (from 2003-2019) and completed across campus while sisters worked on projects as they attended classes and talked with friends old and new. Each year, each team assembled 500–1,000 kits of handmade items such as Christmas stockings, courage capes, teddy bears, infant fleece blankets, greeting cards, wheelchair bags, crocheted scarves and other items and handed them out to waiting hands each conference morning.

Currently, the conference hosts an annual “Evening of Service” (2001 to the present) where sisters can help complete a variety of large-scale projects. In 2019, we assembled 350,000 meal kits, 22,034 school supply kits, 13,308 hygiene kits, and 6,388 fleece blankets, all in just three short hours.

It is inspiring to see miracles accomplished each year as thousands of women joyfully give of themselves. Those who serve at BYU Women’s Conference return to their homes and communities throughout the world with an increased awareness of the needs of others and a greater desire and determination to serve those around them. We encourage sisters everywhere to find and fill local needs by visiting JustServe.org and using project tutorials available on our Serve page.

From the years 2000 to 2018, the conference offered Sharing Stations, a service-idea fair. Today, these Virtual Sharing Stations provide ideas for serving, teaching, and helping one another in our homes, schools, communities, and church callings. Take a look at the Virtual Sharing Stations page from past BYU Women’s Conference Sharing Stations.