Especially For Youth
| Especially for Youth | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Frequency | Weekly during summer months |
| Inaugurated | 1976 |
| Participants | 50,000+ yearly |
| Patron(s) | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints |
Especially For Youth (often abbreviated as EFY) is a week-long youth-oriented seminar focused on fellowship and teaching the principles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It is run by Brigham Young University's (BYU) Continuing Education (CE) and is the largest church-oriented summer camp, attracting over 50,000 attendees every year at locations around the world.
Attendance is open to all youth aged 14 to 18. Sessions, which are primarily held in the United States, follow a common curriculum created by members of the LDS Church. Sessions take place during the summer months in order to coincide with the summer break practiced by many schools. The program is led by Latter-day Saint young adults who serve as counselors for the youth during the sessions. Many of the speakers are selected from the LDS Church's Seminary and Institute program or from the faculty of BYU and its sister institutions in Idaho and Hawaii. All sessions in the United States and Canada are organized and managed by the EFY office on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah, where it is part of BYU's CE, with sessions elsewhere organized by local organizing committees and area authorities.
EFY states that its mission is to help participants "come unto Christ".
The program was created by Ronald C. Hills in 1976 when 172 youth and 15 counselors met for the first session of the summer program. Then-Commissioner of Church Education Jeffrey R. Holland, now of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was one of the banquet speakers at the founding session. The next year, attendance rose to 863 youth. As of 2005, the total number of participants who had attended EFY over the years was 409,484. John Bytheway wrote his Masters Thesis at BYU on the early years of EFY. In 1999, Michael R. Hicks composed The EFY Medley, which up to 2012 became one of the main songs sung at every session of EFY. As of August 2012, JD Hucks was the current program director.
...
Wikipedia