Close to 500 students, staff advisors and volunteers from across the province gathered at Ponoka Secondary Campus for a weekend of motivational speakers, workshops and bonding activities last weekend.

It was all part of the Alberta Junior High Leadership Conference being hosted by the school. Those in attendance were in grades six to nine.

Conference chair Karen David said she was proud of the work students put in to make the event a success, adding she hoped to create new leaders in and outside Ponoka.

“For our own students, we hope to build leadership capacity within our school,” David said. “For the other we hope they can walk away with inspiring ideas they can take to their own schools.”

She said there were 10 students on the host committee, in grades eight to 10.

The opening keynote speaker last Friday was Alvin Law, who drives, plays the piano, drums and trombone. But he does it all without arms, having been born without them.

The author, former broadcaster and now-professional speaker was one of more than 13,000 children born with deformities caused by the morning sickness drug Thalidomide in the 1960s.

One of his key messages to students: that they can be leaders no matter the circumstances.

“A lot of people have great leadership skills deep inside of them but maybe they’re from a single-parent home, maybe they’re from a poor household, maybe they’re from a First Nations community. And they believe those do not support their ability to be a leader,” Law said, who rejects the idea that people are simply born leaders.

“In fact, I believe the exact opposite. We can be the great leader we want to be, because we’ve learned how to struggle. We’ve learned how to survive, and that’s how we grow into leadership. So it can come from anywhere.”