Our Mission |
Our Vision |
| We unite the community to support children and young people up to age 35 in achieving critical milestones from cradle to career. | Every child and young person, no matter their background or circumstances, is thriving and contributing to a vibrant, inclusive economy. |
Who We Are
Rocky Mountain Partnership Cradle to Career™ is the backbone of a collective impact effort in the North Metro region (Adams County, City of Arvada, City of Aurora, and City and County of Broomfield).
Our North Star: 71,142 more young people meeting Cradle to Career milestones by 2030.
We bring together decision-makers, community leaders, and those most impacted by these challenges to create lasting change. As part of the national StriveTogether network, our local efforts are connected to a broader movement working to put 4 million young people nationwide on a path to economic mobility by 2030.
2025 About Rocky Mountain Partnership Cradle to Career™ Video that shows how data, partnership, and action come together to move 71,000 more young people toward lasting stability!
View our full ‘About Us’ Presentation by clicking the button below.
The Challenge
Over 105,000* young people in our region are currently not meeting critical cradle to career milestones.
- Current efforts are often fragmented and siloed, leading to inefficiencies. This lack of coordination leads to major inefficiencies that stall progress, waste resources, and strain capacity
- Our greatest economic asset is our talent, yet we face a significant gap in preparing our community members for the future workforce. To meet the projected needs of employers in our region, we need an additional 15K individuals annually to earn the skills and credentials required for good jobs.
- High costs for housing, healthcare, childcare, and transportation makes it hard for many people to thrive, and make it difficult for employers to attract and retain skilled workers, which in turn hampers economic growth.
Source: RMP Analysis based on data from the Colorado Department of Education, Colorado Department of Higher Education, Apprenticeship USA, Colorado Self-Sufficiency Standard, and US Census Bureau American Community Survey.
Regional Target
Rocky Mountain Partnership Cradle to Career™ has set an ambitious target to ensure an additional 71K children and young people (up to age 35) who are not currently meeting Cradle to Career™ milestones, achieve these critical steps for upward mobility by 2030.
We have launched ‘The Resiliency Project,’ which is our strategic plan for achieving this target.
Our Approach
We believe a significant obstacle to expanding upward mobility is fragmentation and lack of regional coordination. RMP works to address this through a collective impact approach aligned with the national StriveTogether network. Our work brings decision-makers, community members, and those directly impacted by these challenges together in accountable, cross-sector collaboration.
Our work centers around four Approaches:
- Empower Target Champions: get everyone measuring the same thing. Partners commit to the same milestones and row in the same direction, including partners whose work doesn’t obviously tie to these outcomes. When they braid and blend their efforts instead of working alone, the group takes a bigger chunk out of the number of young people falling short.
- Big Bets: tackle what no one can solve alone. Some problems are too big for any single organization. With our Community Leadership Council, we picked a few where we have the partners and the resources to actually move the needle, not big problems for the sake of it.
- Advance Policy Improvements Through Youth Advocacy to Drive Progress Toward 71K by 2030: We can only reach our 71K target by improving the policies that shape young people’s lives. That means tackling policy barriers at every level—organizational, local, regional, state, and federal—with the people most impacted by those policies leading the way. Our approach includes:
- Civic Influencer Fellowship Program and Advocacy
- Data to Action
- Cradle to Career Policy Coalition
- Achieve Operational Excellence and Growth and Sustainability: Evolve the organizational infrastructure to allow for intentional growth and long-term sustainability beyond 2030. RMP is working to evolve its organizational infrastructure to allow for intentional growth and long-term sustainability beyond 2030. This includes:
- Transform Data & Insights into Action
- Sustain & Grow the Neutral Infrastructure
- Launch the Cradle to Career Colorado Collective
Milestones and Metrics for Success
Economic and social mobility can be understood and measured in various ways. Our network, in alignment with StriveTogether, focuses on key milestones that are supported by strong evidence and are essential for individuals to achieve upward mobility.
These milestones also serve as metrics to measure our impact and the advancement of our community. We track these, and the key indicators and enabling factors that affect them, through our Cradle to Career Data Scorecard.
Priority Industries
As we chart our path to ensuring 71,000 additional young people achieve Cradle to Career milestones by 2030, we are prioritizing our work around the industries that serve as major economic drivers and offer employment at a good wage.
These priority industries have been identified through collaboration with key partners, including AC-REP, Adams County Government, Greater Arvada Chamber of Commerce, the Colorado Workforce Development Council, the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, and other experts in talent, workforce, and economic development.