Legislative Advocacy in Kansas
Promoting Just Laws for All of Us
Our board members and staff members work as a whole, utilizing their specialties for a united plan of impact.
- Data. We research and analyze statistics, target their roots, and craft reports that explain their effects on our state.
- Solutions. Our team identifies attainable answers and reforms that legislators at all levels can understand and support.
- Social. We speak with the affected, matching their truths to statistics so that legislators and the public understand the human impact.
- Political. We appear before legislators to educate and motivate them.
- Litigation. If education doesn’t move policymakers toward positive results, we turn to litigation for those who suffer under systemic failures.
- Organization. Our reports connect dots for like-minded organizations and citizens, giving them the tools to help create change in Kansas.
We do all of this with the firm belief that by working together, we can all build a more thriving, inclusive, and just Kansas.
2025 Policy Priorities
Child Welfare
The Kansas foster care system, in its current form, creates strains on stakeholders throughout. It is not good for children, families, social workers, attorneys, judges, administrators, health care workers, or foster parents trying to keep children safe. The system, as is, doesn’t represent our values as Kansans. We should take every opportunity to create a foster system that is effective for everyone involved and centers the well-being of foster children at the forefront of the work.
Youth Justice
Kansas Appleseed has a long history of unwavering commitment to advocating for the rights and well-being of children, including ending punitive youth justice practices in the state. The revised Kansas juvenile justice code establishes that the primary goals of the code include promoting public safety and improving the ability of youth to live more productively and responsibly in the community. Despite these revisions, there are still parts of the youth justice system that are failing the kids it promises to help.
Child Nutrition
In Kansas, almost half of students receive free and reduced priced meals, meaning their families make less than 130% of the federal poverty guidelines for free meals, and less than 185% for reduced priced meals. These meals are a lifeline for many Kansas families, ensuring kids do not go hungry. In Kansas, many kids experiencing hunger and food insecurity are not able to access critical programs that provide much needed nutritious meals and ease the financial burden for their families.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
With a motto like Ad Astra per Aspera, it is in Kansans’ blood to shoot for the stars regardless of our hardships. Kansans are among the hardest workers in our nation– feeding the world and feeding our families. But too often, Kansans can’t make ends meet. With 1 in 8, Kansans struggling to put food on the table, we must work together to ensure all of us can shoot for the same stars. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the primary way we tackle hunger in Kansas.
Help Us Advocate for a Better Kansas!
Advocacy starts at the grassroots, and it succeeds in the halls of power. Working together, we can build a state full of thriving, inclusive, and just communities for all Kansans.
