Improving Lives with Employment and Entrepreneurship Education

Established in 1990, the Kenneth King Foundation is a private, grant making organization located in Denver, Colorado.  Our mission is to create opportunity for Coloradoans to reach their fullest potential for self-sufficiency through access to entrepreneurship, meaningful employment, basic needs and an improved quality of life.

Prodigy Ventures

Prodigy coffee runs a craft coffeehouse on 40th and Colorado that has been working with disengaged, underserved youth for over five years. This social enterprise offers a year-long apprenticeship program for youth aged 18-24, who are:

  • 90% from low-income households
  • 88% Black, indigenous, Latinx and People of Color
  • 44% were homeless or in unstable living situations
  • 40% with experience in foster care

Prodigy has a proven track record of success and is expanding to a second site on 45th and Broadway, with plans to expand to five locations by 2027.

Community Culinary Accelerator

Community Culinary Accelerator (CoCuA) is a social enterprise of Focus Points Family Resource Center. This project is a culinary microbusiness accelerator serving the Cole, Five Points, and surrounding neighborhoods. It offers commissary space for small businesses while operating a café and retail space designed to accelerate businesses to successfully transition to their next stage of growth. CoCuA participants will maintain monthly and quarterly reviews with Focus Points staff, participate in professional workshops, have access to financial planning and marketing resources to build their businesses, as well as access to Focus Points wraparound services to further establish personal and family sustainability.

Kenneth King Impact

The staff makes extra effort to know our community, and to connect us with ideas and resources beyond their funding. A question asked by the Foundation during a COVID briefing with San Luis Valley business leaders about technology needs led to the revitalization of a shelved plan for valley-wide access to high speed broadband internet.  With a collaboration of our council of government’s technical committee, our Development Resource Group, RPD nonprofit leadership committee and Colorado’s Community Resource Center (CRC), we are now funded to staff the project through other funders, and are moving full-force ahead.

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