StartWork: Jobs for People on Income Support

Introducing StartWork

StartWork offers a path to work in the trades and support to transition off of Income Support. It’s also creating more supportive jobs by growing social enterprises in Calgary.

The Challenge

The number of people receiving Income Support, Alberta’s program to help families and individuals with basic living costs, is at a five-year high. Income Support rarely provides enough for a decent standard of living, especially when the recipient is considered ‘expected to work’. 

But just because someone wants to work, doesn’t mean making the switch is easy. Each person’s circumstances are unique to their life story, and supportive jobs are hard to come by. 

How StartWork Helps

StartWork provides a motivating environment, training when appropriate, and connections to job opportunities suitable to the participant’s circumstances.

In 2026 the focus is on opportunities in the skilled trades. 

Mainstream employers do not currently offer enough opportunities for people who have struggled to find work, which is where StartWork partner MRU comes in. MRU is leading the effort to grow social enterprise activity in Calgary. The goal is to create more jobs that are friendly to someone moving off Income Support.

Supportive work could look like:

• A construction crew with a foreman who understands addiction recovery and can insist on work conditions that help the team stay sober.
• A building maintenance position with a multi-lingual supervisor.
• Work schedules to align with the school day.

Paradigm Shift

Here’s where it gets interesting: Momentum and its partners aren’t being paid just enough money by the government to deliver just another program, as is the norm in a classic non-profit funding relationship. 

Instead, Momentum and its partners receive a fair price for the outcome of people leaving the Income Support system.

Ending 300 Albertans’ need for Income Support is the shared goal of StartWork. This uncommon way of funding the work is called outcomes procurement. 

Outcomes procurement puts everyone on the same team:

• Participants are motivated to overcome obstacles to land a job that will pay more than Income Support.
• StartWork staff are motivated to support participants every step of the journey to employment, because that’s how their agency gets paid.
• Government staff are motivated to provide good quality referrals to the program, because doing so reduces their own workload in the short and long term.

Get Involved

If you are on Income Support, register for a StartWork info session through an active program.

Hire a StartWork participant. Contact us to learn more.