When I go on vacation, I love to see new sites and have new experiences. When I get together with friends and family, I like to visit museums and enjoy leisure activities.
The Momentum Center places great emphasis on getting together with people from different cultures. To facilitate this objective, they have created Across the Bridge events, Cultural Immersion Trips, and a Civil Rights Road Trip. What the Momentum Center calls Cultural Immersion, I call vacation. What the Momentum Center calls Across the Bridge, I call an afternoon/weekend out with friends, and what they call the Civil Rights Road Trip, I call a bus tour vacation that creates activists.
During last year’s Across the Bridge event, to represent Grand Haven, the group visited an expensive home on the North Shore, went on a boat ride, and played some golf at the Spring Lake Country Club. In Muskegon, they visited the Muskegon Museum of Art, visited an African American Historical museum, went to a high school football game, and attended church.
Here’s how Grand Haven’s newly elected Mayor Bob Monetza described the Muskegon event.
Here is the Grand Haven Tribune’s photo of their boat ride.
Grand Haven Area Public Schools (GHAPS) is well represented in the Across the Bridge events as Curriculum Director Mary Jane Evink and School Board Trustee Christine Baker have been active participants.
Was the Momentum Center trying to dispel stereotypes or reinforce them when they partnered with people from Muskegon to spend three days exploring each other’s communities? Why didn’t they visit the trailer park in Grand Haven and a wealthy home on Muskegon Lake?
Here are some comments from community members on the Across the Bridge event.
This leisurely get together with friends was paid for with donations from Baker College, Fifth Third Bank, First Presbyterian Church, Gentex, Muskegon Community College, Rotary Club of Grand Haven, Rotary Club of Muskegon, Rotary Club of Spring Lake and Shape Corp. The Momentum Center also receives $22,500 in funding each month from the Ottawa County Mental Health Millage to support its social recreational program for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Mental Illness, and Substance Use Disorders. They also receive a significant amount of funding from the Grand Haven Community Foundation (GHCF), including $80,000 in 2019, $46,000 in 2020, and $74,625 in 2021. The GHCF blog did not provide as much detailed information for donations in 2022 and 2023 regarding the Momentum Center.
According to the Grand Haven Tribune, “The Momentum Center has provided cultural immersion trips in the past – including China, Honduras, Egypt, Kenya and Tibet. Most recently, an American Civil Rights Road Trip took place in April. These are not vacations or service trips; they are experiences that enable people to see the lens through which they view the world and gain a deeper understanding of collective humanity.”
The Momentum Center recently took a Cultural Immersion trip to Morocco.
Here is an interview with the Momentum Center’s Barbara Lee Van Horssen from PBS WGVU Public Media. She begins by explaining her title of Experi-Mentor.
“I mentor experiences, and everything that we are doing is an experiment, so it’s really a dual definition. [] I am a social activist, and a spiritual rebel. I am an ordained interfaith minister, and I have spent the past 25 years in non-profit administration and ministry, and have a real heart for social justice and human rights. I wrote a few books and have done some speaking, and then realized it was difficult to monetize those topics, and so I ended up forming Extended Grace as a nonprofit, so we can find financial viability and security through a number of different ways.”
She also talks about her cultural immersion trip to Tibet. “The Yunan Province is home to over 30 minority cultures, and this is a minority cultures immersion. We do cultural immersion trips because we believe that’s the best way to help people see the lens through which they see the world. [] This particular trip will even have the opportunity to meet with a living Budda.”
It appears former GHAPS Technology Director Brian Wheeler, who was accused embezzling over $1 million from GHAPS, was instrumental in the creation of the Momentum Center Civil Rights Road Trip.
The New Brunswick Theological Seminary describes the Sankofa Journey referred to in the above email, “Sankofa is a three-day, cross-ethnic bus trip designed to help Christians move toward righteous responses to racism and grow to understand and value each other. Each participant is paired with another participant of a different race, and partners discuss and process their experiences together throughout the journey.”
The Momentum Center and other Ottawa County social recreational programs funded by the Ottawa County Mental Health Millage are currently under review by the Community Mental Health board to determine if their contracts will be renewed in September 2024. It appears the Momentum Center is using vulnerable people as an emotional weapon to get wealthy residents to open their wallets, so that these socialites can go on excursions and outings with friends. In my opinion, this is absurd.