The Children’s Corridor is among the most significant areas of need, not just within the metro-Denver area, but within the entire state. Communities within this Corridor are home to many vulnerable families. According to the 2010 Decennial Census, 182,487 people lived in the Corridor and 30% were children. Of the more than 54,000 children living in the Corridor in 2010, almost 35,000 were in low-income families or were considered to be vulnerable.
The Corridor also contains areas of Denver that have been hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis and downturn in the economy. Of foreclosure filings from 2005 through 2009 in Denver neighborhoods, Montbello and Green Valley Ranch were the two neighborhoods with the highest total number of filings (the third highest neighborhood had less than half the number of either of these.).The instability illustrated by the number of foreclosure filings in this area puts many children and families at greater risk and with even bigger challenges and stresses to overcome in their everyday lives.



Building on 35 years of philanthropy, investments and partnerships in Denver’s underserved communities, The Piton Foundation is pursuing a new strategy to help improve outcomes for the city’s most vulnerable children. We believe a focused “Children’s Corridor” represents the best use of our accumulated resources, experience, networks, relationships, business sensibilities, and vision. Here’s our rationale:

  1.  Place-based and policy-level work. Comprehensive change requires both high-level policy and system reform as well as place-based, ground level efforts and results. Piton will continue to invest in both. At the policy level,  Piton will support legislative and institutional reforms that lead to better outcomes for all children. On the ground, Piton will focus its efforts on the 14-mile long Children’s Corridor, where new ideas can be tested and evaluated.
  2. Scale. We need to work in a landscape large enough to allow for……the convergence of many good partners of health and educational services for children…cross-jurisdictional cooperation, integration, and even healthy competition…multiple neighborhoods with a diversity of cultural, economic and ethnic conditions…the opportunity to test and take things to scale…the opportunity to be more flexible in how we take things to scale, hopefully creating seamless pipelines that reach across geography, across jurisdiction, and across provider type.
  3. Momentum. Now is the time when significant forces are converging to create movement, growth, innovation and a climate for change. Consider:
    • The Children’s Corridor is one of the fastest growing population centers in metro Denver.
    • The Children’s Corridor is home to many strong existing efforts and partners.
    • The work of education reformers both nationally and in Colorado has produced a greater sense of urgency around the need for better educational outcomes.
    • Federal health care reform legislation is creating opportunities to change how health care services are delivered at the local level. And significant attention and resources now exist for disease prevention and wellness.
    • The Harlem Children’s Zone and its system of quality pipelines for children has produced a promising new model for large-scale, place-based-change.