The Empower Youth Summit was on November 13 at the Bellevue Christian Center. This event provided tools and ideas for hope squads and students in schools. Many school districts in the area came together as one to make each one of their schools better.
This summit involved four break out sessions that all have different topics and games about mental health. There were also two motivational speakers that came and told their life stories and said inspiring things. Lastly, there were many businesses around the area that had booths of their businesses to support mental health awareness.
“My favorite part about the summit was the Native American speaker Notorious Cree,” Ellie Cain, a junior in Hope Squad said. “He came up and showed us some traditional dances and different things from his culture and talked about acceptance and mental health through acceptance.”
Notorious Cree was the last motivational speaker at the Empower Youth Summit and left an impression on everyone there because he was a funny, uplifting speaker that gave everyone motivation to keep going and do the right thing.
“Notorious Cree was my favorite motivational speaker because I feel like he was more down to earth and his goal was to spread advice and hope for everybody,” junior in Hope Squad, Megan Erdkamp said.
There was also another motivational speaker, Marquis Hill. He travels to many different places to spread his mental health story and inspire others to keep going.
“The first speaker we had was Marquis Hill, he talked about his personal struggles and interacted with the crowd a lot,” Freshman Hope Squad member Delilah Bennett said.
Along with the motivational speakers there were three groups that everyone went to throughout the day. Each Hope Squad member went to different types of groups and got different advice and stories from each one.
“The first group I went to was more of a talk about our personal life,” Erdkamp said. “We had to answer questions for candy, and then talk about how we perceive others and how we judge others off of things we hear.”
Each group gave a different idea and takeaway to bring with the students throughout their life. Every group made the Hope Squad members step out of their comfort zone as they had to interact with many different schools.
“My favorite group I went to was the second group.” Cain said. “It talked about going to talk to people first before they come up to you, and also don’t make assumptions about people before you meet them.”
These groups made each member come back to school with an idea on how to make Elkhorn High a better place for mental health, but also made each member really come back with a big takeaway that will help them all throughout their life.
“My biggest takeaway is that everyone is so much more than what their first impression puts on,” Cain said. “You really need to meet people to understand who they really are inside and what each and every person is going through because everyone has their own story.”