A unanimous vote in the Kansas Senate this week (40-0) on a rural development initiative aimed at providing hope for withering rural Kansas hometowns. The proposal will create a think-tank whose main purpose will be to help revitalize rural towns across Kansas by focusing on building local leaders, attracting and retaining youth, equipping entrepreneurs and retaining local wealth.   

This legislation will allow innovative, creative ways to foster entrepreneurship to grow existing businesses and create new ones in rural Kansas – to provide essential off-farm employment. 

The amount of wealth expected to transfer out of small, rural Kansas communities in the next generation is in the hundreds of billions. If communities had mechanisms in place to capture a small percentage of that wealth, it would provide the wherewithal for communities to implement new and innovative ways to provide future prosperity.