The Queens Public Library (QPL) is one of the largest public libraries in the US and serves the most diverse borough in New York City. QPL strives to create a more vibrant, informed, cohesive, and empowered society by focusing on the values of inclusion, access, integrity, and respect. QPL engaged a Capstone team to strengthen its assessment of its summer reading program. The team conducted a broad analysis of literacy programs at other libraries and educational institutions, including summer reading programs for school-aged children. The team’s final deliverables include a logic model and a preliminary assessment model, as well as next steps for implementing a full assessment of QPL’s summer reading program.

The Action Lab is a young organization that fosters interdisciplinary and cross-movement spaces for learning, gathering, and reflection. Its four anchor initiatives aim to find shared strategies for action, help change-makers build and sharpen social justice skills, understand how arts and culture drive social change, and create resilient healing spaces. The Action Lab engaged a team to further its goal of reconceptualizing relationships to social justice organizing and transformational spaces. Working to shape and actualize the modalities of each initiative, the team built out four resource lists, dialogued with senior program staff, and provided practitioner and speaker suggestions for the lab’s programs. The team’s deliverables to the client included a bibliography of sources and accompanying reflections, a presentation with speaker recommendations, and logistical assistance with future programming.

Day One is a nonprofit organization that partners with youth to end dating abuse and intimate partner violence (IPV) through an empowerment model of community education, supportive services, legal advocacy, and leadership development. Day One’s clients are impacted by various issues beyond IPV, including the school-to-prison pipeline, lack of reproductive care, and housing insecurity. However, Day One has limited capacity to engage in advocacy efforts related to these areas. The client enlisted the team to identify best practices for setting policy and advocacy priorities and deepening staff and youth involvement in these processes. The team conducted legislative research, identified potential allies in elected office, surveyed staff and youth clients, and conducted employee focus groups. Based on its research findings, the team developed a final report recommending policy priorities, internal and external advocacy strategies, and best practices for engaging staff and youth.

CholPori is a web-based, self-driven learning application that enables students in Bangladesh to enhance their literary learning both inside and outside the classroom. An estimated two-thirds of students in Bangladesh are currently reading below grade level literacy standards. In order to assess their application, which began its launch in January 2022, CholPori enlisted a Capstone team to create a product testing plan and data collection strategy. The team conducted a context and market analysis, using its results to develop a Classroom Implementation Assessment Tool and a post-launch usability survey. The data collected through the assessment tool and survey was designed to evaluate impact and inform CholPori’s strategy. With evidence-based research and analysis, the team has helped lay the groundwork for CholiPori’s expansion into the Bangladeshi educational technology market.

Médecins du Monde (MdM) is a medical and humanitarian organization providing care to the most vulnerable populations in the world. For over 30 years, MdM has supported Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) projects, and is especially committed to providing SRH services in crisis and development settings. MdM engaged a Capstone team to identify telehealth approaches to improve SRH education and promote accessibility to SRH services for adolescents in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. In order to assess SRH interventions and specific needs in Kinshasa, the team conducted qualitative and literature-based research, created an environmental scan, and interviewed youth and institutional stakeholder groups. Using its research, the team created two digital survey tools and developed an annotated bibliography with existing scientific and operational studies on SRH interventions in low-resource settings. Based on its findings, the team proposed contextualized recommendations for MdM to guide future SRH strategy and efforts.

New York City implemented an open enrollment policy for high school admissions in 2004, allowing schools to set their own admissions policies and students to apply to schools outside their geographic zone—leading to an increase in admissions screenings based on factors such as student attendance and past academic performance. The Capstone team explored the impact of this policy on public school fundraising, hypothesizing that families seek out “opportunity hoarding” within screened schools. The team examined fundraising by school-supporting organizations as one measure of opportunity hoarding, constructed an original dataset linking publicly available tax records to school-level data to identify the change in per-pupil fundraising by school, and conducted a difference-in-difference analysis comparing the NYC school system to zoned districts within Long Island’s Nassau County. While the team found that overall fundraising increased after the 2004 policy change, the small sample of available data limits the statistical significance of the findings. The final report presents a model for linking fundraising data to individual schools and suggestions for improving data availability.

A Better Jamaica (ABJ) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 that is dedicated to offering a broad range of programs, from arts and culture to educational support, to strengthen the community of Jamaica, Queens. ABJ engaged a Capstone team with the goal of increasing access to local music education. The team reviewed data to identify relevant trends in existing music education offerings in middle schools in three school districts. The team held task force meetings with eight experienced music educators and conducted a qualitative analysis, which highlighted the stark dropoff in the availability and quality of local music education and means of implementing change. The team created a final report that included a literature review synthesizing the significance and impact of music education, qualitative data on the state and history of music education in the community, quantitative data visualizations showing the rates of offerings and engagement, and funding sources to support increased music education. The team presented its research to key stakeholders—task force members, educators, principals, and elected officials—at a final meeting to further the client’s vision and collaborate on potential solutions.