MOOSE JAW — Sam Demma is a professional youth speaker and author who has delivered over 500 presentations in the last five years, including two TEDx appearances and guest spots on outlets like Breakfast Television, CTV, Global News, and CityNews.
Demma was at the tail end of high school in Pickering, Ont., when he spoke at a school assembly to ask for help with PickWaste, a litter cleanup project he co-founded with a classmate.
“I just walked into my principal’s office and said, ‘hey, can I speak in front of the school population, just to recruit people to come outside and pick up litter with us,’” Demma explained in an interview with MooseJawToday.com.
“So, my first introduction to public speaking was like, a two-minute assembly presentation in my high school. I realized from that experience how much I love doing it, and then as the initiative grew, schools and principals just started reaching out.”
Demma began his professional speaking career at 19. Now 24, he has turned his passion for inspiring his peers into an international business — he’s interviewed and showcased 250-plus educators through his multi-media platform The High Performing Educator, and his High Performing Student Program has impacted youth in six countries.
His PickWaste project is still going and is now an annual event in his hometown. However, he has expanded his repertoire and polished his abilities with the help of practice, feedback, and mentorship, and has built a reputation for engagement and motivation.
“By the time I was 19, schools and events were hiring me to deliver 60-minute keynotes on different topics,” he said. “Mental health, overcoming adversity, anti-bullying. So, instead of just offering students a volunteer opportunity, I’m being asked to help make behavioral changes in schools.”
Demma said that despite specializing as a youth speaker, his presentation and message creates connections regardless of age. He maintains a cultural relevance with his own generation, but hope, resilience, and useful self-help tools are for everyone.
“I still live in those same spaces. So, all the kids are on TikTok — I’m on TikTok. I know all the dances and the slang, so when I go on stage, my presentation starts with a spoken word poem, and then I do this dance move called The Whoa, and I hit the gritty, and I get sturdy, you know? All these different moves that the kids love, and they lose their minds, right?
“So, a lot of students will come up to me after my presentation, but also staff members … and even with the book, Empty Your Backpack, I mean, I wrote it with students in mind. But I’ve had so many adults read it and send me grateful messages … Just last week, I did a presentation at Durham College, and it was a community event and it was open to business people. And I think I was the youngest person there.”
Demma’s latest tour, Empty Your Backpack, is based on his book released in 2022. It was inspired by an emotional conversation with a Grade 10 student struggling with their mental health.
“It seemed like most of his challenges were coming from the words other people were using to describe him, or the actions others were taking toward him,” he explained. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about how this young person was carrying around negative thoughts and opinions from other people.”
He managed to find an enormous prop backpack to use for a presentation on the subject, and turned it upside down. It’s a reminder, Demma said, to kids or anyone else, to try and live your life in such a way that if someone else puts something negative on you, it just slips out from that backpack.
His latest speaking tour will take him to 82 schools across Canada, including in Weyburn and Estevan.
Information on Sam Demma and his work, including how to book him for a speaking appearance, is at samdemma.com and at emptyyourbackpack.ca.
