Empowerment Squared

2 weeks into 🇱🇷&🇬🇭! Take a look at our IYIP interns and their journey so far! 🌍📚✏️

Ticket sales for our 2026 Annual Celebration close tomorrow, May 22, 2026. If you have not yet secured your spot, now is the time!

Get your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2026-annual-celebration-tickets-1983370618912

This year, we are marking 18 years of community impact under the theme The Power of CommYOUnity.

The evening will bring together community members, business leaders, social impact investors, philanthropists, and government partners to reflect on our collective impact in Canada and around the world. Dinner will be served (Halal options available), with an unlimited selection of pops and juice. A cash bar and free on-site parking will also be available.

We hope you will be there to celebrate it with us!

Celebration

Today, our heart is full.
We are proud to share that the fourth cohort of Empowerment Squared’s International Youth Internship Program (IYIP) has safely arrived in Ghana and Liberia.

What began as an idea rooted in possibility has now become a growing movement of young people choosing purpose over comfort and community over convenience.

Over the next three months, these incredible research interns will be living and working alongside local communities:

In Liberia, they will be engaging in community-based research on drug and substance abuse, seeking to understand not just the issue, but the human stories, the systems, and the solutions rooted in community realities.

In Nsawam, Ghana, they will be exploring the impact of rural educational infrastructure on girls’ education and learning outcomes, helping to uncover pathways toward more equitable and accessible education.

This is what global citizenship looks like, not charity, not observation, but relationship, humility, and learning.

These young leaders are not going to “fix” communities, they are going to listen, learn, and walk alongside.

To our interns: Travel safely. Learn deeply. Lead with humility.
To our partners and communities in Ghana and Liberia: Thank you for welcoming our young people into your spaces, your stories, and your lives.
And to everyone who continues to believe in this work, this is the Power of People in action.

Grateful for our amazing Sankofa Sponsors✨
⭐Overbay Capital Partners
⭐Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre
⭐Callide

Thank you for standing with us as our event approaches!

2026 Annual Celebration is gradually approaching!
12 more days to go !
Click the link below to get your ticket!🥳🩵💚🧡💓


https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2026-annual-celebration-tickets-1983370618912?aff=oddtdtcreator

2026 Annual Celebration is gradually approaching! 12 more days to go!
Link in our bio to get your ticket!🥳🩵💚🧡💓

Today, our Chief Empowerment Officer Leo Nupolu Johnson shares a letter in honour of Dr. Juliet Daniel, a cherished member of the Empowerment Squared family and a valued supporter of our shared mission.

Dr. Daniel embodied the spirit of Ubuntu — I am because we are. Her connection to Empowerment Squared was not transactional, it was relational.

She believed in the work because she believed in people, and she poured into others with her intellect, her compassion, and her presence in ways that were uniquely hers.

Hamilton was honoured to call her home. Barbados grounded her. And Africa gifted her the ancestral wisdom that guided her purpose.

In the culture of Ubuntu, we do not say goodbye. We say: Continue well.

Rest in power, Dr. Daniel.

Read the full letter on the Empowerment Squared website.

https://empowermentsquared.org/a-letter-in-honour-of-dr-juliet-daniel

The STEAM Program focused on fostering creativity, innovation, and hands-on learning through Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics.

Designed by Cohort 3 intern Dorcas Adewumi as part of her passion project during her placement in Liberia, the program encouraged critical thinking and problem-solving through interactive learning experiences. Participants had the opportunity to develop practical, creative, and collaborative skills while exploring STEAM in an engaging way.

This initiative highlighted the importance of accessible educational spaces that inspire youth development, innovation, and lifelong learning.