On May 13, 2025, Momentum staff, board members, participants and community members came together for our Annual Celebration and General Meeting. With our theme “Stronger Together” we showed that together as a community, we can achieve great things and overcome any obstacle thrown in our way.

While there is much to celebrate in our work, this year’s Annual General Meeting was less celebratory as we learned of the sudden passing of one of our staff members, Samuel Green. Sam first joined Momentum four years ago to work with participants in our business training programs. For the past three years, Sam was a dedicated member of our Public Policy team, progressing the work of Momentum in meaningful and powerful ways. His family shared that Sam was very proud to work with us, and that he was committed to contributing to greater equity in our community every day.

This loss is profound for all who knew Sam, he will be very missed. We honoured his memory with a moment of silence.

The evening was hosted by Momentum’s Executive Director Jeff Loomis and Zaky, a youth matched savings past participant (more about Zaky here). Together, they shared highlights and challenges from the past year to a full room at the Calgary Central Library.

The sharing of the highlights was illustrated by Kelly, a Momentum Self Employment graduate and amazing sand artist. You can see Kelly at her tea and sand art studio space T.SAND in Calgary’s Beltline.

2024 was a year of significant challenges for many—including Momentum. An unprecedented budget cut to our Trades Training programs tested our resilience—but despite that, we were still able to achieve some impressive outcomes.

We also highlighted some key policy changes that we contributed to, including lowering the Criminal Rate of Interest, reducing non-sufficient fund fees and our work to increase access to the Canada Learning Bond (CLB) so more families living on lower-incomes can access education savings. You can learn more about these wins here, and our story on the in our Annual Donor Impact Report.

Past participants were truly the stars of the show as we also shared videos of graduates from Financial Empowerment and Trades Training.

We highlighted the inspiring journey of Tasha, an Owen Hart Homeowners Graduate, and her journey experiencing homelessness to becoming a homeowner—and who is now, after the sale of her first home, living mortgage free! You can watch the video here and read about her journey in our Annual Donor Impact Report.

In this fun and riveting video spotlight on the trades, Plumbing and Pipefitting graduates Abel and Melissa battle it out with two of Momentum’s long-time donors in an ‘Iron Plumber’ competition, aptly demonstrating why high-quality training and education in the trades is so important.

We don’t do this work alone. At the event, we highlighted several of our community partners, including the Piping Industry Training School (PITS) Calgary, Prospect Human Services Society, ActionDignity, Connections for Families, Miskanawah Community Services Association, Vibrant Communities Calgary, Women's Centre of Calgary and Rise Calgary. It was also great to have the Annual Celebration hosted by the Calgary Public Library, which is a long-time Momentum partner.

To close out the meeting, attendees networked and ate food provided by Aroma Café—the owners are Momentum grads!

To learn more about our impact in 2024, check out our Annual Donor Impact Report.