Working harder, faster, more efficiently with the same overrepresented leadership won’t close the opportunity gap for youth of color.

We believe it is imperative to invest in leaders who come from the communities they want to serve to ensure long-lasting, sustainable change.

A strong solution design is necessary but insufficient. We invest equal amounts of time in the leader as we do in the design of an idea.

Our Fellows have good ideas. So do their communities. We create opportunities for Moonshot Fellows to source community need and co-design their ideas with youth and families, and frequently solicit feedback from them to make ideas better. .

OUR THEORY OF CHANGE

Moonshot believes that if we invest in growing and mobilizing a community of local, historically marginalized leaders and support them with the skills, network, and resources to disrupt systemic inequities, we can transform outcomes for youth most on the margins.

OUR MISSION & VISION

VISION: Equity-driven leaders embedded in the community are cultivating systems and environments for youth on the margins to thrive.

MISSION: Grow a community of BIPOC & historically marginalized leaders with the skills and resources to design collaborative solutions that disrupt systemic inequities impacting youth.

WHAT WE DO

Moonshot’s ultimate goal is to cultivate systems and environments for youth on the margins to thrive, and we do this by empowering equity-driven leaders who are embedded in the community.

Our core program is the Moonshot Innovation Space (formerly known as the Moonshot Fellowship) which supports a community of leaders in the Metro Denver area in a series of weekly workshops. We also have additional follow-on programs to create sustainability support for our leaders.

OUR WHY

Moonshot addresses two needs that we see as the most pressing needs related to systems that impact youth here in Denver:

• Need 1: Our work is driven by the need for sustainable solutions that are designed from a systems-change perspective and address root causes–rather than only the symptoms of–inequities that impact youth.

• Need 2: We believe the change needs to come from the communities themselves, who deeply understand hopes, desires, and the path they want. We want local leaders who come from communities with shared identities and lived experiences with the youth that their solutions are designed to positively impact.

The inspiration for our name comes from a talk by Google X Lab entrepreneurs and scientists. “Why aim for 10% growth,” they asked, “when you can aim for 10x?” Computer scientist Astro Teller explains:

“People can set their minds to magical, seemingly impossible ideas...If you want cars to run at 50 miles per gallon, fine, you can retool your car a little bit. If I tell you if it has to run on a gallon of gas for 5 hundred miles, you have to start over … You don’t spend your time being bothered that you can’t teleport from here to Japan, because there’s a part of you that thinks that’s impossible. Moonshot thinking is choosing to be bothered by that.”