Grow Our Own

Education programs for students in science, technology, engineering arts, and math

Our Mission

Grow Our Own Initiative

To build the community and take charge of our future, we focus on using what we have locally
now to grow our own for the future. The concept continues to expand following these
guidelines:

  • Assist local business in all the ways we can to ensure they can grow to their full potential.
  • Support the new businesses that are looking to start in our community.
  • We must start looking to create pathways for the people who already live here to find well-
    paying and meaningful work in our community.
  • Focus on the next generation of residents by creating pathways to employment for students
    so that they will remain in the community.

We do this by acting as a liaison, matchmaker, identifier, mediator, and facilitator. We
undertake the role of identifying areas of opportunity and convening partners so that they can
work together to find solutions.

Elementary school kids climbing on to a school bus

Our Programs

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Baseball Card Project

A collaborative project to aide middle school and high school programs that address our unique regional needs, critical profession shortages, and ongoing workforce demands. This ‘Baseball Card’ campaign highlights local family wage professions and provides a clear path to make it happen. The idea of baseball card is not new to incentivizing youth to learn more about trades and careers that interest them. There are several not-for-profit 501(c)(3) education foundations as well as government / military agencies that have proven the reliability of this type of grassroots youth career tool.

View Careers

An Initiative Of The Umpqua Economic Development Partnership

UEDP, known as the Partnership, is a collaborative organization focused on retention, expansion and recruitment of primary industry or “traded sector” businesses that provide family-wage jobs in Douglas County. Over the past year, the Partnership added an additional area of focus; sustainability. Douglas County economic feedback clearly showed the lack of secession planning for all areas of industry. These industry leaders shared their concern for the lack of willing, trained and qualified applicants who could start at the entry-level and follow through with a career plan.

Learn more at www.uedpartnership.org