Empowering Colorado Talent
Young people in Colorado’s rural and underinvested urban communities are being left behind as the state’s economic opportunities continue to expand.
Homegrown Pathways is designed to embed AmeriCorps national service members as the foundation of a direct service model that will catalyze regional career pathways for under-empowered youth. This includes entrepreneurial career pathways. The model is being developed for delivery in both in and out-of-school settings, as well as within at-risk youth mentoring and economic assistance programs for young adults. A state-funded planning process is underway in three regions across the Western Slope, as we aim to develop a model that can scale state-wide and be replicated by others nationwide.
Building the Colorado Youth Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
Entrepreneurial pathways are critical to economic mobility, especially in rural regions. Built around Startup Colorado’s highly successful Idea Factory model, Homegrown Pathways is implementing a youth pre-accelerator program called Spark Lab. The experience is designed to “spark” entrepreneurial pursuits, while developing skills and self-agency, social capital and potential funding resources. Learn more about Spark Lab and our 2024-25 pilot.
Americorps National Service
AmeriCorps members serve with nonprofit organizations to tackle our nation’s most pressing challenges. Serve Colorado, part of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, has selected three regional grantees to develop and prepare this new AmeriCorps model for planned operational delivery in 2025. The Homegrown Pathways model is unique in that the recruited service members will be young adults (18-24) from the home community, in many cases graduating high school seniors. The year of service becomes a multi-discipline, apprenticeship experience that will accelerate the members’ own career pathways as regional workforce entrants, post-secondary degree seekers, entrepreneurs, teachers and workforce development professionals
Our strategy
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Spark Inspiration and Awareness of Quality Regional Careers, Including Entrepreneurship
Many young people and parents/guardians are unaware of the dynamic companies and high-quality jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities that often exist in rural regions.
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Provide Region-Specific, Workforce-Informed, Career Pathways Tools & Human Connections
There are both information and social capital gaps that impede actionable steps to further explore and secure a quality local careers, including through in-demand credentials, apprenticeships, degrees and trainings.
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Uplift and Embed within Existing Local Programs
It is essential to align with the career pathway and entrepreneurship-support programs that already exist through local schools, youth-service providers, chambers of commerce and workforce development centers.
Human Capital is Essential
Our strategy is grounded in the recognition that there is a significant human capital gap when it comes to delivering programming to individual young adults at scale within rural and underinvested schools and communities. AmeriCorps becomes fundamental to addressing this human capital gap, while simultaneously creating a career pathway vehicle for the AmeriCorps members themselves.
How we do it.
spark day: Hands-On Career Exposure Event
Spark Day is a single day model implemented within the regular school day or out-of-school setting. The day includes 3-4 region-specific “innovation experiences,” a regional career pathways lesson, and one-on-one youth career interest listening sessions. Learn more.
Spark Kit: Regional Career Pathways Toolkits
Toolkits highlight region-specific growth sectors and in-demand jobs while providing action-oriented next steps to further explore specific careers of interest, including through a school district, after-school programs, regional higher ed institutions, and workforce partners Learn more.
Spark Lab: Youth Pre-Accelerator
Spark Lab is a 6-week, after-school/work, Pre-Accelerator model that creates an experience for select youth to be paid to further develop their idea into a business. Homegrown Pathways is partnering with Startup Colorado to design and scale these models. Startup Colorado is the state’s leading provider of support and financial resources for rural entrepreneurs. Learn more.
Why it matters
As a nation, we have been experiencing declining social mobility to the point where the majority of young people will be economically worse off than their parents.
Here in Colorado, more than half of the state's residents have a postsecondary degree (the 2nd highest in the nation), yet only 22% graduated from Colorado’s K-12 public schools. 97% of Colorado’s top in-demand jobs require some level of postsecondary education or certification, but only about one in five Colorado high school graduates will obtain that credential. At the same time, “talent” and “workforce” are identified as the #1 challenge to the success of Colorado businesses.
The answer to the challenges of both individual economic mobility and Colorado business success resides in connecting homegrown talent to high-quality regional career pathways.
Meanwhile, the data also reveals that parental wealth is more important than interest and skill in determining who becomes an inventor. At Homegrown Pathways we aim to not only build pathways into existing businesses, but also to foster entrepreneurship and innovation.
Our vision is a Colorado, and a country, where innovation and economic mobility is driven by talent and interest, regardless of parental wealth, race, gender, or zip code.
