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ABOUT US — APPLESEED'S LEVERAGING POWER

Connecticut Appleseed is a statewide, non-partisan 501(c)3 organization dedicated to building a more just society.   Our mission is to develop solutions for the causes, rather than the symptoms, of our state’s social problems.  We deploy volunteer lawyers and other professionals to achieve systemic changes through legal and legislative advocacy, negotiation, education and other initiatives.  Our projects focus on the education, healthcare and financial issues affecting the state’s disadvantaged and underrepresented citizens because their needs are increasing.

Connecticut Appleseed is the only statewide legal group devoted primarily to bringing about systemic changes that improve the lives of our state’s most disadvantaged citizens.  Rather than serving individual clients, we place our emphasis on developing practical and lasting solutions for chronic injustices in health care, public education, immigration and child welfare.  Our core competence is developing systemic fixes for Connecticut’s glaring disparities in educational achievement, economic opportunity and social justice.

The Appleseed network (www.appleseednetwork.org) of which we are part is an asset that both fosters multi-state collaborative projects and helps us to rapidly share successful ideas and best practices.  Innovative programs that originate in any of the 16 Appleseed states are replicated and exported to sister “Centers”, while Connecticut also applies programs here from throughout the network - without having to reinvent the wheel.   As a result, donations to Connecticut Appleseed are highly leveraged by results achieved throughout the 16-state Appleseed network

The Appleseed network has increasingly undertaken multi-Center collaborative projects that leverage both national and in-state pro bono legal resources.  Connecticut Appleseed was one of the 6 state-based Centers that collaborated with the national Holland & Knight firm to produce “It Takes a Parent: Transforming Education in the Wake of the No Child Left Behind Act".  By jointly developing an important report addressing persistent achievement gaps between minority and white students, each Center dramatically leveraged the influence any of us could have achieved on our own. 

By leveraging the efforts of our well-connected Board, skilled volunteers and tiny staff, Connecticut Appleseed operates very efficiently.  Hundreds and hundreds of hours of pro bono support from law firms and volunteer attorneys help our staff and Board to analyze issues, make recommendations and advance solutions.  Volunteer attorneys are presently at work on our Mental Health and Elder Law projects, while attorneys at Robinson  & Cole LLP and Day Pitney LLP have already spent over 300 pro bono hours in creating handbooks on parents’ legal rights in the public education system.