We are Homegrown
Homegrown Pathways was founded in Ridgway, Colorado in 2023.
The organization grew out of a federally funded planning process involving 9 school districts, 6 higher education institutions, and the largest workforce center on the Western Slope — a two-year effort to map what rural youth actually needed to access economic opportunity in their home region.
That process produced Spark Lab.
Homegrown Pathways was founded on the Western Slope of Colorado by homegrown talent.
Our work today
Homegrown Pathways leads the Western Slope Schools Career Collaborative (WSSCC), a rural school district collaborative comprising the Montrose, Delta, Ridgway, and Gunnison School Districts. WSSCC is an independent 501(c)3 governed by a board of the four district superintendents and three regional postsecondary partners. Together, HGP and WSSCC oversee combined organizational budgets of over $900,000 and represent the leading nonprofit in West-Central Colorado focused on career-connected learning and economic mobility for high school students.
Spark Lab is our core direct service model. During the 2025–26 school year, we ran five cohorts across three rural school districts, serving 85 students, deploying $50,000+ through the Youth Venture Fund, and hosting four community pitch events attended by 30+ regional supporters.
Beyond Spark Lab, HGP holds a contract with Elevate Quantum — the nation's first EDA-funded Tech Hub — to design a rural pathways strategy for quantum and quantum-adjacent careers across rural Colorado and rural New Mexico.
Where we’re headed
Colorado's new Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness bill (SB25-315) creates direct revenue incentives for school districts whose students complete high-quality career and entrepreneurial experiences. Spark Lab is actively in queue for approval as an eligible credential. If approved, school districts would be paid by the state for each student who completes the program — a public funding pathway that would anchor long-term sustainability and enable scale.
Our model for growth is partnership-driven: rather than expanding HGP's direct delivery footprint, we're building a consultative framework that allows other rural-serving organizations to deliver Spark Lab locally, with HGP providing training, curriculum support, and quality oversight. A pilot of this model is planned for the greater Trinidad region in 2027, in partnership with Emergent Campus Trinidad.