Photos: Evening of service brings thousands of women together at BYU

PROVO, Utah — Through the work of thousands of women at once, BYU Women’s Conference set a new service record for the conference on Thursday evening, May 4 — packaging almost 400,000 meals in three hours for Hunger Fight.

“This is the fastest we’ve done [that many meals] in the 10 years we’ve been doing this,” said Dean Porter, the vice president of operations for Hunger Fight, an organization based in the southeastern U.S. that provides packaged meals for families and children in need.

“We want to give them an opportunity to have what you and I take for granted, which is three meals a day,” Porter said.

The work was done assembly style in a large open gym inside the Smith Fieldhouse on BYU’s campus. A line of women stretched down the indoor track, waiting for their turn to package meals or take part in another service project.

Besides the Hunger Fight service project, other service opportunities included assembling school kits and hygiene kits, making courage capes, autism caterpillars, Christmas stockings and teddy bears. The items will be donated to local agencies who will distribute them to members of the community in need.

In total, the attendees made:

• 1,147 Courage Capes
• 576 Christmas stockings
• 304 teddy bears
• 704 autism caterpillars
• 9,768 school kits
• 4,120 hygiene kits
• 398,160 meal kits

In the room where volunteers packaged school kits, long-time friends Danielle Stucki and Melissa Larsen from Syracuse, Utah, helped move stacks of backpacks from place to place.

Stucki said being with so many other women and serving together was powerful: “All things are possible when many hands make light work.”

Added Larsen, “Talk about being God’s hands on earth. This is awesome.”

Porter was appreciative of all the volunteers. “This is a beautiful way to bring the entire community together to make a difference for others.”

See photos of the service efforts below.