Tag Archives: Engineering

Engaging in the Monumental Impact Community

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Engaging in the Monumental Impact Community

At Monumental Impact, we believe in empowering individuals to make, create, and connect through hands-on experiences that build confidence, careers, and community.
Whether you’re a student, entrepreneur, mentor, or lifelong maker, there’s a place for you in our growing ecosystem of creators, innovators, and collaborators.

🔹 Join a Member Program

Our Member Programs are the heart of how people engage at Monumental Impact. Each program connects learning, creativity, and community impact in a different way:

  • Entrepreneurship — Turn your ideas into real products or ventures. Use our makerspace to prototype, batch-produce, and test your creations, with access to community feedback and guidance from mentors and interns.
  • Competition Programs — Participate in team-based and/or individual robotics, engineering, or innovation challenges. Our mentors and volunteers support you with equipment, build techniques, teamwork, and safety.
  • Personal Projects — Use our workspace, tools, and training to explore your interests, build new skills, and bring your ideas to life.

🔹 Support as a Mentor, Volunteer, or Intern

You don’t have to be building something to make an impact — you can help others build their confidence and skills.

  • Mentors share their professional experience to guide teams, students, and entrepreneurs.
  • Volunteers lend their time during workshops, competitions, or community events.
  • Interns contribute through meaningful projects that strengthen our programs and community connections.

Each role helps expand the reach and sustainability of our mission.

🔹 Engage Through Leadership or Coordination

Our programs thrive through dedicated community members who help connect people and opportunities.

  • Community Member Liaison volunteers welcome new members and guide them toward the best way to engage.
  • Program Leads and Coaches support Competition and Entrepreneurship initiatives.
  • Marketing & Communications contributors help share our stories and inspire others to get involved.

If you’re looking to take a leadership role, we’ll help you find the right fit.

🔹 Access the Makerspace

Our community makerspace in Palmer Lake is open to members of all ages and experience levels of high school students, college students, adults and seniors. Whether you’re tinkering, fabricating, or just exploring your creativity, you’ll find equipment, training, and a supportive network of peers and mentors.
You can also take part in themed workshops — from Artistic 3D Printing and Mechanical Puzzle Design to Cosplay & Prop Fabrication — to expand your skills and meet others who love to make.

🔹 Partner and Collaborate

We’re actively seeking industry partners who want to help shape the next generation of creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs.

By partnering with Monumental Impact, businesses can:

  • Provide real-world context for students and adult members through project-based challenges, guest talks, and facility tours.
  • Share industry insights that inspire entrepreneurship and inform career pathways.
  • Collaborate on career readiness experiences that connect hands-on making with practical workplace skills.
  • Engage with our community makerspace to explore innovation, prototyping, and local talent development.

We also work closely with industry, Tri-Lakes Chamber, Pikes Peak Business & Education Alliance (PPBEA), colleges, schools and economic development partners to align these efforts and strengthen our region’s innovation ecosystem.
Parents, educators, and professionals all play a part in creating opportunities for our members to learn, build, and grow.

🌟 Why It Matters

Every connection strengthens our mission — to provide the resources, mentorship, and space needed to turn curiosity into capability.
When you engage with Monumental Impact, you’re not just joining a makerspace — you’re helping build a future-ready community where creativity and collaboration lead to real-world confidence.

Ready to Get Involved and Start Your Journey Today? 👉

Or email enable@monumentalimpact.org.

Monumental Impact Designated as an Enterprise Zone Contribution Project to Expand Entrepreneurship and Career Readiness in the Tri-Lakes Region

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Monumental Impact Designated as an Enterprise Zone Contribution Project to Expand Entrepreneurship and Career Readiness in the Tri-Lakes Region

Palmer Lake, CO — Monumental Impact, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to empowering high school students, college students, and adults in technology, engineering, and entrepreneurship, has been officially approved as an Enterprise Zone Contribution Project in El Paso County.

This designation recognizes Monumental Impact’s role in driving regional workforce and business development through its Entrepreneurship and Career Readiness Programs — programs that equip participants with hands-on experience, mentorship, and real-world problem-solving skills in a collaborative makerspace environment.

“Our community makerspace is where innovation happens,” said Jeanette Breton, Executive Director of Monumental Impact. “It’s a place where students, professionals, and entrepreneurs come together to design, prototype, and launch ideas that strengthen our local economy and create new opportunities.”

Through these programs, participants gain access to advanced fabrication tools — including 3D printers, CNC machines, and laser engravers — as well as professional mentors and business incubation support. Monumental Impact’s hands-on learning model not only builds technical and entrepreneurial capacity but also fosters self-confidence, collaboration, and life-long learning.

As an approved Enterprise Zone Contribution Project, individuals and businesses who contribute to Monumental Impact may receive Colorado state income tax credits for qualifying donations. These contributions directly support the nonprofit’s mission to expand career-connected learning, small business incubation, and innovation pathways within the Tri-Lakes Enterprise Zone.

“Being part of the Enterprise Zone program allows our donors to multiply their impact,” Breton added. “Every contribution fuels opportunities for the next generation of makers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders.”

🗣️ Community Voices on Monumental Impact’s Enterprise Zone Designation

Town of Palmer Lake

“Monumental Impact’s makerspace and mentorship programs prepare youth and adults for career pathways and serve as a launchpad for new and growing businesses in our region.”

Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce

“A unique and powerful contributor to our economic ecosystem, Monumental Impact is preparing the next generation of innovators and small business owners.”

Pikes Peak Business & Education Alliance (PPBEA)

“Monumental Impact’s makerspace creates a dynamic hub where learners engage directly with industry professionals and community volunteers.”

To learn more about the Enterprise Zone program and how to make a qualifying contribution, visit:
🔗 https://monumentalimpact.org/monumental-impact-approved-as-an-enterprise-zone-contribution-project/

To contact us you can email enable@monumentalimpact.org or call us at 719-387-7414.

Students Elevate Their Tech Game

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Thank you to Stephanie Gonzales, a freelance writer for Lewis Palmer School District 38 (D38), for her article on Monumental Impact’s Engineering Firm Experiences offered to D38 students through a collaborative partnership with D38. Under the Engineering Firm Experience the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) program is a competitive “sports of the mind” where students have “Go to Market” industry-like experiences as they prepare to compete, both in their robot’s capabilities and their business engineering portfolio.

Building Our Social Enterprise

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We are ready to build our foundation as a social enterprise. Are there high school students out there in the Tri-Lakes area interested in joining us on the journey? Do you want to help us with engineering and / or technology products, services or event content? There are no definitive books or surefire nonprofit business models for what we envision as our offerings, but we are okay with this.  Since every student is different and the fields of technology and engineering are broad and diverse, we expect over the years our offerings will be different, broad and diverse. Our internships will provide industry experiences as we define, refine, make and deliver offerings. We look forward to helping spark interests and increase awareness of career opportunities in these fields.

Our intent as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit is to be a social enterprise[1].  We would prefer to diversify our funding options and provide opportunities for students to gain industry experience of bringing products, services and events to market as engineers and technologists. As a nonprofit, we can be entrepreneurial.  We can sell products and services, but our income must go back into our mission.  Our mission is to enable student interests and skills in engineering and technology.  Thus we should focus our products or services to be engineering and / or technology-centered to align with our mission.

As with any business we should also set income goals that align with this social enterprise intent. This year we have set non-zero goals for any products, services or event income that we are able to achieve together.

This summer we will be building a foundation in both our development lifecycle and our offerings. The process will span a year across multiple internships for one product to complete one cycle.  After working the product through the process, students will gain a deep understanding of the roles, process and types of businesses that are involved in bringing an engineering and technology-focused product to market. Exciting times for those coming on board this summer for the journey!

We are starting this summer in Stage 1 of our development lifecycle. In our first two weeks we will brainstorm and collaborate together on what products, services or event content we have an interest in designing and prototyping.  What types of products will we design, prototype, sell? How do we plan to deliver? Who is our target audience of these products? Which way will we choose to manufacture them later in the year?  We will also explore whether we could provide services? What can we offer with our skills?  

We don’t plan to work in isolation and will look at opportunities to broaden our experience. For instance, to get a lay of the industry in Stage 1 we intend to visit with inventors and businesses that deliver products or provide services, large and small.  

On November 20th, 2021, Monumental Impact intends to host a MITEE[2] Exhibition. This event will provide an opportunity for students to showcase projects they have been working on and for supported programs to share their latest creations.  During our brainstorm some students may come up with a project that will focus on entertaining community members at the exhibition.  To add to the fun, we may choose to host activities in which both adults and students can participate such as a DonkeyCar Rally and Colorado Combat Robotics.  The Exhibition will provide an opportunity for some fun, market offerings and inspire others to love engineering and technology as we do!

If you are a high school student in the area interested in engineering and technology, we’d love to have you on our team. Monumental Impact is looking forward to seeing what we come up with together!

More information on applying to our internships can be found here.

Summer Internship Schedule

We know summer schedules can be hectic. Some may have jobs that are helping them with funds while others have family vacation obligations. We have proposed the following 2-7-2 schedule for our summer internships. The work schedule will include a 2-week focused time of 3-4 hours a day as a team at the beginning and end of the internship while we have a 7-week flex period in-between where team members are working remotely. A key to this schedule will be the first work week of June 1st where we work together to define our projects and business expectations.

[1] More about social enterprises can be found in our previous article, How is Monumental Impact a Social Enterprise?.

[2] MITEE stands for Monumental Impact for Technology, Engineering and Entrepreneurship.

Ready to enable student experiences

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Core to our mission is to enable student experiences. We now have a space, but how does that impact enabling student experiences, especially in a time of COVID? Well, it impacts our ability to have a home base to enable different types of student experiences even with COVID. We will use our space for: small team competition activities; training before a rotation of desktop equipment to a student’s home and; internships with home-based businesses.

What type of student experiences? With two of our industry areas of technology and engineering we are currently focused on enabling student experiences with fabrication and design capabilities. These two areas can be enabled with some out of the box thinking even with the restrictions of COVID.

For fabrication experiences we will start with 3D Printing and CNC router equipment (examples shown). Supplies include plastic filament, aluminum, lexan, router bits, Dewalt 611 router for these types of experiences.

The design area covers many different disciplines of engineering and graphics, even programming and entrepreneurial marketing. To provide design experiences you need high-end graphics PCs with software licenses for the discipline of interest such as mechanical, electrical, programming and graphics. By providing the equipment and supplies needed for these experiences, students interested in these areas are enabled to explore these career pathways.

We look forward to enabling students interested in learning design-to-fabrication techniques with desktop tools and supplies even with COVID. We also look forward to enabling small team activities for the Bearbotics that is still competing this season during COVID.

With these types of student experiences available to students interested in these fields, we will have enabled them in their journey even during COVID. With a will there’s a way to enable. We just need to think outside of the box. Will you help us enable these student experiences?


Monument nonprofit ‘impacts’ technology, engineering and entrepreneurship for local youth

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Thank you to Benn Farrell, a freelance writer for the Gazette, for his article in The Tribune on Monumental Impact as we were finding our footing in 2020 after COVID restrictions were put in place. We started our nonprofit one month before COVID and yet we still had six interns that first summer that worked remotely to help form and shape our internship opportunities for students interested in technology, engineering and entrepreneurship.