Home Depot offers free trade education to tweens and teens
The Home Depot Foundation is launching a new initiative to introduce 15 million young people to the skilled construction trades by 2032.
As part of this effort, the non-profit organization of home improvement giant Home Depot is debuting the “Path to Pro Skills Explorers” curriculum, a free, hands-on educational experience designed to introduce middle and high school students ages 11–17 to careers in the trades.
Developed in partnership with Scouting America and piloted with Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Skills Explorers is designed to equip teachers, parents and community mentors with turn-key modules to teach foundational skills in areas such as woodworking, plumbing, electrical and painting. Students can gain exposure to career pathways and the curriculum also includes age-appropriate content on leadership and soft skills.
In addition, educators have access to free facilitation guides and videos aligned with applications that integrate into STEM and career exploration modules and parents can obtain interactive, hands-on project guides to share with their teens.
The Path to Pro program began in 2018 as a partnership between The Home Depot Foundation and non-profit skilled trade training platform Home Builders Institute (HBI) for military members returning to civilian life and has since scaled into a nationwide effort spanning all 50 states.
[READ MORE: Home Depot launches skilled trades education initiative]
Other offerings include the Path to Pro Education Grants program, a $1 million partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) and teaming up with StrataTech Education Group (StrataTech), an operator of skilled trade schools, to provide educational content for a career in professional welding or refrigeration.
"For years, the Path to Pro programs have helped separating military, career changers and others build pathways to the trades," said Michael Rowe, executive VP of Pro for The Home Depot. "We know that closing the skilled labor gap starts much earlier. We need more young people to see what's possible and understand the lucrative opportunities these careers provide."
Atlanta-based The Home Depot Inc. is the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer. At the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, the company operated a total of 2,364 retail stores and more than 1,340 SRS locations across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, 10 Canadian provinces and Mexico.
