{"id":23519,"date":"2026-06-13T05:24:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T05:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/13\/global-social-impact-capstone-puts-student-research-to-work-for-informal-recyclers-around-the-world-spia-pitt-edu\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T05:24:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T05:24:58","slug":"global-social-impact-capstone-puts-student-research-to-work-for-informal-recyclers-around-the-world-spia-pitt-edu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/13\/global-social-impact-capstone-puts-student-research-to-work-for-informal-recyclers-around-the-world-spia-pitt-edu\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Social Impact Capstone puts student research to work for informal recyclers around the world – spia.pitt.edu"},"content":{"rendered":"

This spring, a group of students sifting through program data for an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) discovered something unexpected: women were suffering workplace accidents at higher rates than men, despite being more likely to wear protective equipment.
The students were enrolled in SPIA’s Global Social Impact Capstone, a course that allows participants to engage in exploratory research and apply lessons learned in the classroom to real-world policy problems. Led by Associate Professor Nuno Themudo<\/a>, whose research centers on NGOs, nonprofit management, and international development, the course partnered nineteen students with WORK<\/a>, an international nongovernmental organization that supports waste pickers and informal recyclers in some of the world’s most difficult and underserved communities.
Eleanor Yale (MPIA ’26) was one of those students. A participant in the university’s 4+1 program, Yale began working toward her degree in public and international affairs during her senior year as a Pitt undergraduate. Her concentration in human security has allowed her to dive deep into questions of vulnerability, development, and global policy, yet this spring\u2019s capstone offered something much of her other coursework hadn\u2019t\u2014the chance to apply those lessons directly, alongside an organization doing meaningful work.
“I\u2019ve never been able to partner with a real organization in a collaborative and learning-based way,” she said, “and I grew drastically within a single semester. The skills I gained in teamwork, time management, and leadership are directly transferrable to my career goals in government and diplomacy. That kind of collaboration is key for providing strong policy recommendations and analysis.”
Over the course of the semester, Yale and her classmates delivered two integrated projects with direct operational value for the NGO.
The first, a Risk Assessment Tool designed to help WORK evaluate potential new sites for expansion, assessed worker vulnerability, operational challenges, and local capacity, generating country profiles and priority rankings to guide the organization’s global decisions. The second project took a closer look at WORK’s own program data, revealing new patterns in worker needs and equipment safety.
\u201cThey saw that women suffer more workplace accidents despite wearing protective equipment, suggesting the equipment may be inappropriate for the tasks they perform,\u201d explained Themudo. \u201cStudents also used their research to develop data infrastructure recommendations to strengthen WORK’s future monitoring and evaluation.\u201d
Yale was part of the team that produced that second project. As a member of the capstone’s five-person data group, she spent the semester combing through raw organizational data, running statistical analyses, and ultimately presenting findings to WORK directly.
“The access to real data utilized by an NGO was incredibly useful, whereas data is not always perfectly curated within academic settings,” Yale said. “The ability to decipher and analyze the data in a real-life scenario was my favorite piece of this course.”
The projects carried particular weight because of where WORK operates. Haiti, the organization’s first country of operation and one of its most significant sites, scores high on both worker vulnerability and operational risk. Those are precisely the conditions WORK exists to address, and the tools students built will directly support the organization’s ongoing programs there.
\u201cOur students learned that for mission-driven organizations like WORK, risk is not something to avoid but something to understand, plan for, and engage with strategically,\u201d Themudo said.
Interested in graduate training that connects policy analysis to real-world impact? Learn more about SPIA’s <\/em>Master of Public and International Affairs<\/em><\/a> with concentrations including <\/em>Human Security<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>International Political Economy<\/em><\/a>, and <\/em>Security & Intelligence Studies<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>
3601 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
230 South Bouquet Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
412-648-7640
spia@pitt.edu<\/a>
Request Information<\/a>  Apply<\/a>
Contact SPIA<\/a><\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This spring, a group of students sifting through program data for an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) discovered something unexpected: women were suffering workplace accidents at higher rates than men, despite being more likely to wear protective equipment.The students were enrolled in SPIA’s Global Social Impact Capstone, a course that allows participants to engage in exploratory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}