In November, we held our 2025 Annual Members’ Meeting for Self-Help Credit Union and the Center for Community Self-Help in Durham, NC. In this blog post, we give a brief overview of what was shared, including clips from a couple of our speakers.

Overview

The remarks began with an introduction from Tom King, the vice chair of Self-Help Credit Union, who welcomed everyone to the meeting and discussed the board member elections. Next, Marcus Bowen, the chief financial officer at Self-Help, gave a financial update and supervisory committee report before turning it over to our program spotlight.

Franja Meeks, the small business coaching manager for Self-Help, gave a fantastic overview of our new Business Train program and the benefits it has had for our members who are small business owners. To emphasize this, she welcomed our special guest speaker for the evening, Chef Sicily Johnson, who is the co-founder and CEO of Kind Kitchen Group.

Kind Kitchen Group is a culinary education nonprofit that drives social change for underserved youth through food, culinary education, wellness, and community empowerment. Chef Johnson participated in the Business Train after opening a business account with Self-Help.

Learn more about her experience starting Kind Kitchen Group with the support of resources from Self-Help and the Business Train program:

Next, Sonia Garrison, our director of business development, highlighted our financial capability program, which just celebrated its five-year anniversary. For insights directly from a financial coach, we heard from Maggie Burley, a universal banker and financial coach who is passionate about working with members to build their financial capability.

In her speech, she shared about one client named Rufus who came to her wanting to build credit:

The executive vice president of Self-Help, Crystal German, then discussed updates on our homeownership programs before our Co-founder and CEO, Martin Eakes, gave his closing CEO update.

We Hope You’ll Join Us in 2026

Thank you to all of our members and partners who were able to attend the 2025 Annual Members’ Meeting! In this coming year, we will continue to support all of our communities in achieving ownership and economic opportunity. We appreciate you taking the time to join us and are eager to welcome you again in 2026.