Western slope built

Our four partner school districts — Montrose, Delta, Ridgway, and Gunnison — span Montrose, Delta, Ouray, and Gunnison Counties, and our direct service footprint covers Mesa County as well. During the 2025–26 school year, Spark Lab ran across four high schools in three of those districts, reaching 85 students through 70+ hours of in-school programming and four community pitch events. Through WSSCC, we delivered additional career-connected programming to 350+ students across the region, engaging 25+ regional businesses as mentors, panelists, and pitch event judges.

Our work is expanding beyond the Western Slope. Through a partnership with Elevate Quantum — the nation's first federally funded quantum tech hub — Homegrown Pathways is building new emerging tech career pathway resources intended for the rural Mountain West. The work is beginning in two large rural regions: the Highway 50-550 Corridor from Grand Junction to Durango, and the Southern I-25 Corridor stretching from Pueblo and Trinidad, Colorado through Northern New Mexico.

A partnership-driven pilot of Spark Lab is also planned for the greater Trinidad region in 2027, in collaboration with Emergent Campus Trinidad. Together, these efforts extend HGP's reach across a rural geography that represents a significant portion of Colorado and the Mountain West.