10 Hour Value Projects
Below is a list that was once called “Laurel Projects” But there are some great ideas that can be used for value projects, they are not listed per value, but I am sure you can figure out what value they would go in. Maybe some day when I have extra time, I will list the values they would go with. And some may need a little more added to them to make then 10 Hour Projects, but it will get the girls thinking.
1. Organize & carry out a family reunion.
2. Organize and lead a ward youth choir.
3. Create and make a collection of your own writings, musical compositions, or graphic artwork.
4. Give consistent help over a period of time to a family or individual in your ward with special needs.
5. With the approval or member of the bishopric, organize and carry out a mission preparation experience for the young men and young women in your ward.
6. Organize and implement a scripture-reading incentive program for your class. You may want to invite the young men to participate.
7. Write and direct a dramatic presentation that portrays a gospel theme and involves children or youth in your ward.
8. Create a children’s game that will help a child learn a principle of the gospel, such as making correct choices.
9. Learn about or develop a system for organizing information or materials and begin your own system.
10. Complete a certain first-aid course, including CPR training, and serve as a volunteer in teaching first-aid skills.
11. Learn signing for the deaf and teach a song to your young women group to perform in Sacrament Meeting. If there is a deaf branch near you, you may ask for permission to assist on a primary lesson or help teach a group of deaf children the 13 Articles of Faith.
12. Teach reading or language skills to someone in need of help.
13. Serve as a volunteer guide or docent in a community park, museum, or zoo for at least three months. Share the knowledge you have acquired as a result of your service.
14. Plan and care for a vegetable garden or maintain your family’s or someone else’s yard for three months without pay.
15. Prepare and conduct a preschool or nursery class as a service for younger children.
16. Organize sewing or other home skills class for younger children.
17. Serve as a volunteer in a hospital, nursing home, day-care center, or other community social service institution.
18. Prepare 72-hour kits for each member of your family and present a FHE lesson on emergency preparedness. Help plan a family emergency plan.
19. Organize and carry out a substance abuse prevention program in your school or community.
20. With the approval of your bishop and the mission president responsible for you area, work with full-time sister missionaries on a regular basis.
21. With the approval of a member of the bishopric, organize and conduct a cultural arts event for your ward or community. Coordinate this activity with the ward calendar through you Young Women President.
22. Put together a “Plan for College” evening or Saturday afternoon for the young men and young women with sessions on college preparation, scholarships, high school academics and other associations (clubs, etc.), study habits, budgeting, cooking, etc.
23. Make something that could be of value to your posterity such as a piece of needlework, a family flag, a coat of arms, or a quilt.
24. Plan and complete a personal history on each parent, and all your grandparents. Type them up nicely and present them as gifts to other family members.
25. Write your own personal history.
26. Work with parents to prepare names for temple work.
27. Find stories of experiences, personalities, etc. of ancestors and put together a book of ancestral history that takes a more personal look into their lives.
28. Record children’s stories on tape and make puppets or flannel board characters to go along with stories. Donate to a children’s hospital or domestic abuse shelter.
29. Plan and organize a service day for a youth group where you can go serve in different places for different people.
30. Put together activity kits or trick-or-treat bags with treats in it for children. Deliver to low-income youth center or domestic abuse shelter.
31. Plan and organize a blanket or coat drive at a time other than the holiday season.
32. Plan and organize a drive for a homeless shelter for household items such as towels, dishes, appliances, sheets, etc.
33. Make a “this is your life” quilt for you, a parent, a church leader or an “appreciation” quilt for the bishop, stake president or stake patriarch.
34. Volunteer at a service center.
35. Volunteer at a veterinarian’s office or the Humane Society.
36. Make baby quilts to take to hospitals for women on welfare.
37. Organize a children’s used video drive to donate to a children’s hospital, homeless or domestic abuse shelter.
38. Plan and organize Family Home Evenings for an entire year. Plan lesson topics, spiritual thoughts and songs. If you have younger brothers and sisters put together flannel board stories, etc.
39. Learn to sew and make some baptismal clothes for the ward.
40. Take a class to improve a talent such as singing, dance, piano lessons, etc. Maybe organize a night where you and other young women could share their talents.
41. Put together a tutoring program for children in the ward.
42. Plan and organize a children’s “Olympics” in your ward. Talk to the Primary president and ask for names of children who are less active or are struggling. Make it a whole day event. Plan fun events and have awards at the end. Make sure each group gets an award of some kind. You could make the events gospel related.
43. Pick a personal challenge (spiritual or physical) and set up a progress/program to strengthen yourself in that area. Organize and come up with a game plan to go by for at least 3 months. Make a visual display to remind yourself. Write about it in your journal as you go along.
44. Spend at least 20 hours studying different material about the life of the Savior. Put together a presentation and present it at a fireside for the youth. Write about your feelings in your journal as you go along.
45. Read the whole Book of Mormon. As you read it keep a record in a notebook of each chapter or section and what you learned as you go along. Make it as detailed as possible. Keep an ongoing record also of your favorite scripture references, by topic and file in a small file box for easy reference. On each 3X5 card write reference, write out scripture or key words, and why it stood out to you.
46. Read the whole Doctrine & Covenants and do the same as above.
47. Learn how to crochet or quilt. Make 1st college blanket, make 1st wedding quilt, or make 1st baby blanket for yourself or for someone else.
48. Put together a family cookbook with favorite recipes. Give to family members as gifts. Familiarize yourself with the recipes and learn to make them as you go along.
49. Learn how to can fruit.
50. Learn how to stencil, wallpaper and paint. Redo a room in your house.
51. Provide free babysitting for 6 months for a couple every other week for them to go to the temple or on a date. Plan activities for the children. If age appropriate, activities could teach them about the temple.
52. Provide babysitting for the nursery for Homemaking for 6 months. Plan activities for the children.
53. Make finger puppets for a children’s hospital. When they prick fingertips, they like to give them a finger puppet because they do it so often. Children’s Hospital in Seattle goes through 50 each day.
54. Make bags that fit over the back of a wheelchair. Donate to a children’s hospital. They are always in need of them.
55. Schedule and plan specific times at a domestic abuse shelter or homeless shelter for the children to make Christmas ornaments and the moms could do a craft. On other months besides Christmas you could do other crafts, stories or skits.
56. Plan and organize a swimsuit drive or make swimsuits for a children’s hospital. They do therapy and have other activities in the pool. Always in need of them!!
57. Learn to knit and knit booties for babies at a children’s hospital, homeless shelter, domestic abuse shelter or any hospital. Always a need for these!!
58. Sew onesies for babies at a children’s hospital.
59. Sew flannel receiving blankets for babies at a children’s hospital.
60. Sew little outfits to give to parents of premature babies.
61. Organize a book drive for homeless shelters or hospitals. Children’s hospitals are always in need of paper-back and regular books for kids of all ages. Teenagers included.
62. Volunteer at Deseret Industries for 20-30 hours (or at a Salvation Army).
63. Call LDS or regular bookstores and donate time.
64. Call local child care places and ask if there is a need for certain items. Maybe you can volunteer your time to read or do a craft. Maybe there is something you could make for them of help them prepare (cut-outs, etc.).
65. Volunteer your time to go visit an elderly person in our ward on a regular basis. Offer to do housework or just sit and talk.
66. Offer to do Personal History for an elderly person in ward. Interview them, get it organized and type it up for them.
67. Offer to organize things such as photos or paper work for elderly person in ward.
67. Learn to do woodworking and make yourself a hope chest.
68. Offer free babysitting around the holidays so families can do their shopping.
69. Create a family newsletter for a year and distribute to all relatives every 3 months. Check with all of them for ongoing events in everyone’s lives. Have one person each month send in a spiritual message on a certain subject. Example, have Uncle Joe send you his message on “The Joys of Freedom” for the July newsletter. You could have crossword puzzles, thoughts, funny quotes, funny memories, announcements, etc.
70. With the approval of the Primary President and YW Leader, serve as a helper in Primary in making visual aids and other class materials. Help w/Achievement Day or other Primary activities.
71. Plan and organize a fun night of songs and funny skits for a domestic abuse shelter or nursing home. Call local florists and see if they would donate flowers. Put together little booklets called “Messages of Hope” for the women. In the booklet put quotes on hope, courage, and determination from church leaders. Coordinate w/everyone what they are doing. Make sure you have some fun songs and skits but also some that will touch their hearts, i.e. You’re Not Alone, Walk Tall, etc. Get permission to make little loaves of banana bread for the moms and little goody bags for the kids.
72. Call around to athletic clothing distributors and see if anyone will donate plain baseball caps. Send a sign-up sheet around in R.S. and ask women in ward to donate things to decorate them with (pom-poms, wiggly eyes, pipe cleaners, silk flowers, ribbon, little army guys, small plastic dinosaurs, fabric paint, patches, etc.) Make “Happy Hats” and deliver to children at domestic abuse shelter, homeless shelter, or children’s hospital.
73. Learn to crochet and crochet afghan squares for the Red Cross “Warm Up America” Program. They will put the blankets together; they just need people to make the squares (7″x9″ rectangle). For information call (704) 824-7838, or
Warm Up America!
c/o Craft Yarn Council 2500 Lowell Rd.
Gastonia, NC 28054
74. Organize a blood drive.
75. Read the “Miracle of Forgiveness,” look up every scripture you can find on repentance and forgiveness, keep a journal while doing so, and make some personal goals between you and your Father in Heaven for 3 months. Make a visual reminder.
76. Learn to cross-stitch and make a picture of your favorite temple or a family tree.
77. Make a “Journal Jar” for each member of your family, including yourself. Encourage everyone to start his or her own personal history. Gather all the info at the end of a year and put everyone’s history into one big family one.
78. With your Bishop’s approval, learn all the missionary discussions by heart and offer to go on splits w/the ward and stake missionaries for 4 months when they are teaching women.
79. Choose a career field in which you have interest. Contact someone in that field and volunteer your time to learn about that specific field.
80. Make a “friendship quilt”. Hand out fabric squares to your friends, have them decorate them and give them back to you. Make a quilt to help you remember each friend through the years.
81. Plan and organize a “Parent’s Prom” for the couples in your ward. Collect high school pictures of them, vote on a king and queen, play their favorite music, etc.
82. Make barrettes or hair scrunchies for at the temple or temple clothes for children being sealed to their parents.
83. Learn about cars and help fix one up.
84. Put together an *Individual Worth” photo album. You can focus on your strengths, talents, etc. Mix in with the photos some of your favorite scriptures and thought.
85. Plan and carry out New Beginnings
When I was a Laurel, I wrote a play (one act about 20-25 minutes) and put it on with another Laurel and a little girl from primary for a fireside one Sunday.
86. Get a book of cross-stitch patterns from the church bookstore (I’ve even seen the book on the internet for sale) and cross-stitched all the values and meanings and the theme and pictures of the torch and each class’s picture. Then I made it into a quilt using the young women colors as borders. I still sleep under that quilt!
87. Put on a prom for the ward’s married couples, complete with pictures.
88. One YW did a years worth of family home evenings, with all the flannel board pictures and props…. tons of work, but what a wonderful resource for her future family as well as her present one.
89. One Laurel is teaching a 9-year-old boy to read.
90. Give piano lessons.
91. Coach or run a tournament for a YW sport.
92. Do a babysitting service project–so couples could go to the temple.
93. Help make awards, binders, bookmarks, or other YW memorabilia for the incoming Beehives or upcoming activities.
94. Make pretty value-colored posters for the values, value statements, and related scriptures.
95. Make tablecloths out of the value colors for the young women’s room
96. Make a craft or room decoration which includes all of the young women colors for each young woman in the ward. When a young woman finishes that value, she gets an item of the matching value color. This may encourage the girls to think about what she still must do to complete her year’s experiences.
97. Plan an all-night scripture-a-thon. Plan different characters from the scriptures to visit throughout the night/evening and different discussions to keep everyone awake and focused on the reading.
98. Have a clothing drive. Make boxes to place around the building and asked members donate the clothes. Launder, separate, and fold all the donations. Take them to a shelter. (Check first with the shelter first to determine needs, etc.)
99. Organize a service project to benefit a home for pregnant girls. Make a quilt for each baby that will be born soon. Provide seasonal decorations to make the home more cozy and throw a seasonal party. If there are also children living there, provide activities or crafts for them at the party.
100. I have given my Laurels the choices of putting together the various special activities throughout the year (New Beginnings, YW in Excellence), and one of my Laurels did a Super Saturday activity (our ward was in charge of the activity, and she had a great idea, so we let her do it). They always come up with such creative ideas!!! You could put one in charge of a fireside, a weekday activity–someone said they had about 10 mini-activities to let the girls see some ideas for full-blown activities, and then they took 2 or 3 of those activities a week and let the girls do more involved projects.
101. Then there’s the “make something for someone needy” activities: e.g. making quilts, teddy bears, toiletry kits and getting book donations for the local S.O.S shelter; making quilts for the homeless shelter; work in the local soup kitchen x amount of hours; making quilts and baby clothes for the hospitals to hand out; gathering donations for the thrift shops; etc. There’s also doing yard work for a shut-in; helping people move into or out of the ward (mostly setting up volunteer schedules); visiting a local nursing home (or setting up a ward service project for a local nursing home, doing yard work, visiting the residents, having the primary make drawings and sing songs, etc.) 102. Plan a youth temple trip (rides, accommodation, lunch, etc., etc.).
103.Learn to quilt, knit, crochet, cross-stitch, etc. and complete a project.
104.One of our girls had lived in Europe and wanted to prepare a scrapbook of her experiences there.
105. Write an YW or YW/YM newsletter monthly for a specified length of time. Distribute it to all the youth.
106. Learn and practice a homemaking skill such as cooking or sewing. (20 hours worth should teach them well)
107. Plan an YW retreat for the ward.
108. Work on genealogy at you local family history center. Computerize your family records on PAF or do research yourself. Prepare names for the temple and do the work.
109. Learn a musical instrument and perform at YW in excellence.
110. Compile a cookbook or favorite recipes from ward members.
111. Learn to paint or wallpaper.
112. Maintain a garden for a season.
113. Tutor a younger person in a subject you are good at.
114. This one is almost completed by one of our girls: transpose favorite YW music into sing able keys! We purchased many copies of “I walk by faith” and received permission from the publisher to transpose a pianist copy because we’ ve got a room full of altos. This girl comes to my house on Sunday afternoons to use my computer music program. It has been really nice to use some of that music that they would otherwise screech and giggle through.
115. Make a year’s worth of personal progress reminders and handouts for YW.
116. Our Laurel class made arrangements to go to the children’s ward of a hospital on a monthly basis and decorate for the different holidays. For one weekday activity we would make the decorations, and then on Sunday we would take them to the hospital to put up on the walls. We did this for about 7 months.
117.We also have had several different service projects where we sewed bibs for a women’s shelter and have gone to the local food bank and also the bishop’s storehouse.
118.Spend time at the dog/cat pound doing service there and taking care of animals
119. Planning and implementing a large all-day free babysitting activity a few weekends before Christmas so that parents in the ward can go Christmas shopping w/o little ones afoot (includes snack preparation, planning the day’s activities, assigning other YW to take part of the assignments, making Christmas presents for the parents, lunch, taking pictures for the parents to see later, etc.)
120. Planning and implementing a canned food drive in the community Gathering clothes to be taken to Mexico (pick-up, cleaning clothes, sorting by size, gender, seasons; packing and delivery to appropriate people in the community)
121. Providing a large family with the “12 Days of Christmas” anonymously, of course!
122. Making baby quilts and presenting these to new mothers in the ward along with “baby baskets” filled with essential baby items
123. Organizing a YW choir Providing a summer’s worth of service at a home for young children with physical and mental disabilities.
124. Writing a Sacrament Meeting Program to be “performed” (probably not the most reverent word for a Sacrament Meeting) by the youth (a Laurel did the Book of Mormon as her themeIf you contact SLC ask them about it. The girls can put together new baby kits, crochet leper bandages, etc. The church can give you all the specifics.