The Sleeman Centre in Guelph was packed on Thursday, May 8, as upwards of 5,000 UGDSB students in grades 6 to 8 attended this year’s Empowerment Day.
Under the theme “Push Beyond”, Empowerment Day 2025 had a stacked lineup of interesting speakers covering a broad range of topics, all motivating students to get out of their comfort zone and challenge themselves.
Blake Fly, a 9x TEDX speaker, kicked off the day with an infectious speech that encouraged the students to look up and pay attention.
“My invitation to you today is when you leave this place... be the first person to make a brief moment of eye contact with people in these hallways," Fly told the audience. "Instead of trying to do things no one's ever done, what if you did things that people no longer do? Like a glance or a smile in the hallway. It's kinda weird, but your current best friend once upon a time was a glance in the hallway."
Storm chaser and global explorer George Kourounis followed Fly with a highly visual presentation about his extraordinary career that incorporated his real-world photos and video clips of him in the field.
“My job is to track down and document Mother Nature when she is having her worst, cranky, temper tantrum," Kourounis told the students. “That involves chasing tornadoes, and driving into the heart of hurricanes, volcanoes, avalanches, wildfires - anything that Mother Nature has in her arsenal that can kill you.”
Chris Koch, who was born without arms and legs, delivered a powerful presentation based on his “If I can…” message.
"I'm not a musician, I'm not a storm chaser, I'm not a slam poet, and I have not won gold for Canada playing soccer, but I've done some pretty cool things," Koch started his speech, referring to the fellow speakers at the event. "Hopefully by the end of my presentation… it'll give you that little nudge to realize that, yeah, those types of things are definitely something that is within reach for you."
After a break for lunch, slam poet Dwayne Morgan took the stage with a message for students in the arena to “be present”.
“We wake up in the morning, we put our nice uniforms on, and then we get on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram,” Morgan said. “The game of life is happening and we’re not even in the game because we’re so concerned with what is happening in the lives of people who don’t matter and people who are going to have no impact on your life.”
Near the end of the event, Canadian soccer icon Christine Sinclair was joined on stage by three female student athletes for a “campfire” chat. Sitting on stools in a circle, this unique setup allowed each of the three students to go around asking Sinclair questions about her career and the future of soccer for girls in Canada.
"Our goal has always been to inspire the next generation of Canadians, [and to] leave the sport a better place. And this is our way of doing that so that now young girls don't have to retire when they finish school," Sinclair said about the recently launched Northern Super League (NSL), the first-ever pro women's soccer league in Canada.
Blake Fly returned to the stage with guitar in hand to wrap up the event with a musically comical speech that had the students singing along to Oasis’ "Wonderwall" at one point. Before ending, Fly invited a student from the audience to come up on stage and record a message for her dad while the crowd cheered and sang Bob Marley’s "One Love" in the background.
"Empowerment Day allows students to understand they have the power to make a positive difference in their communities and beyond," Elora PS teacher and Empowerment Day organizer Andy Speers said after the event. "The hope is that each student will take at least one message from one of our speakers that positively changes their lives moving forward."
Empowerment Day 2025 would not have been possible without our Impact Sponsor, Skyline, our Legacy Sponsor, the Optimist Clubs of the Upper Grand area, our Gold Sponsor, Kat Florence, as well as Red Car Service, Fergus Elora Rotary, Fergus Legion, RLB, TD, Grand River Agricultural Society, Aypa Power, SHSM, and the many private donations we received.