PPE Capstone Projects

Team CAMMA addressed the lack of knowledge and indifference on refugee hardships within the Buffalo community. The team went about this by working with Journey’s End Refugee Services (JERS) to create a hands-on, in-person simulation highlighting the struggles of being displaced from home, the grueling time spent in refugee camps, and the hardships of integrating into a new community. As they designed this “Refugee Simulation,” Team CAMMA learned a lot about the refugee admissions process and real-life stories from former refugees who moved to Buffalo. From this, the team also created an insightful presentation about the important responsibility of the community in being educated about, and perhaps even advocating for, our foreign-born neighbors. With the Refugee Simulation now in the hands of JERS, this organization plans on holding sessions where volunteers can engage in this activity, resulting in a greater awareness of the current refugee situation while developing more empathy towards our fellow community members.

The Smiling Friends partnered with Jewish Family Services (JFS) of Western New York to address major breakdowns in volunteer coordination and donation management systems following federal funding cuts that caused staffing losses and operational strain. To support JFS, the team redesigned and streamlined volunteer and in-kind donation processes by cleaning up a volunteer database of more than 600 records, creating donation request and reporting forms, updating inventory and fair-market value tracking spreadsheets, and drafting onboarding and internship materials for future volunteer coordinators. As a result, the project helped JFS establish more efficient systems for managing volunteers and donations, which staff believe will improve communication, increase volunteer participation, and reduce administrative burdens. JFS staff also indicated that the Smiling Friends’ work will continue benefiting the organization into the future.

Immigrant and refugee students at Lafayette International High School face a range of interconnected barriers that contribute to chronic absenteeism, including financial insecurity, language challenges, and broader social and political pressures. The Wishlist Collective partnered with Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugee Youth (TST-R), a program of Jewish Family Services (JFS) of Western New York, to address these challenges by creating a support-based donation initiative aimed at improving student engagement and attendance. After touring Lafayette and researching the factors affecting refugee student success, the team developed surveys to identify students’ most urgent material needs, including hygiene products, books, and other essentials. The group then coordinated outreach efforts with nonprofits, community organizations, and local donors across Buffalo to secure resources and build long-term partnerships. As a result, the project generated approximately $1,500 in donations, collected substantial hygiene product contributions, and helped establish an ongoing partnership between JFS and Good Neighbors Credit Union, which plans to provide Lafayette students with free financial literacy workshops and continued community support.

Team Won with Nature addressed environmental sustainability by promoting native plants in the Buffalo community. The team went about this by partnering with local environmental organizations and community gardens to help with current and future projects for native plant implementation and habitat restoration as well as providing labor for however their partners deemed necessary. Team Won with Nature was able to create a native plant nursery at Pelion Community Garden that will allow other organizations such as Tifft Nature Preserve and Reinstein Woods to source native plants for upcoming projects. Along with the nursery, they were also able to remove numerous species of invasive plants at each location and replace them with new native species. Besides creating a more sustainable environment in the Buffalo community, the team’s partners will be able to use these plants as educational tools for current and future generations while also taking steps in response to the global climate crisis.

Team 9 to Thrive aimed to address systemic inequities refugees confront when seeking employment in Buffalo. In partnership with Journey’s End Refugee Services, the team developed multilingual pamphlets to support resettlers navigating the job market and launched a Job Club program: free informational sessions focused on specific aspects of employment training and assistance. Hosted at the Tri-Main Center, the team's pilot session on American Work Culture welcomed four language groups (Arabic, Dari, Swahili, and Rohingya) of resettlers with provided interpretation services. The team's efforts were rooted in a commitment to help resettlers realize their agency and reshape workforce systems to better reflect the values of a multi-cultural, pluralistic society. Team 9 to Thrive hopes these materials and partnerships will serve as a model for more inclusive workforce development efforts across Buffalo.

Team Food Security was concerned with the widespread, historical, and multicausal issue of food insecurity within the City of Buffalo, especially in Buffalo’s East Side. To address this issue at one of its root sources in childhood education, the team helped implement an afterschool program at Harvey Austin School to display the benefits of proper nutrition. This program was facilitated through the support of UB Veggie Van that provided local produce and cheese to demonstrate healthy salad food preparation for the children. Faculty and staff at Harvey Austin School were very pleased with the program and all the students took the supplies for making salads at their homes. Going forward, the Buffalo Community Lab, an organization hosted by UB’s Department of Sociology and Criminology, intends to take Team Food Security’s progress and continue nutrition education at Harvey Austin School.

Team Risin’ Bison sought to promote Buffalo as a “sanctuary city” by assisting local immigrants and refugees. Consulting with local non-profits, the team learned about the need to more effectively connect immigrants and refugees to the services they require. As a result, Team Risin’ Bison created a pilot website and database cataloguing existing local resources already available for immigrants and refugees. The website was met with enthusiasm, with other organizations wanting their services included in the database. In addition, the team was scheduled to host a student “think tank” at UB to brainstorm other ways for connecting local immigrant and refugee services to those who need them. Unfortunately, that event was cancelled due to an increased police presence at UB in response to Pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Undeterred, Team Risin’ Bison has partnered with UB’s Inclusive Immigration and Democratic Revival Project, which promises to promote the continuation and development of the project’s website and database.

UB Parish Partners sought to improve the community integration of migrant families new to Buffalo. The team did so by connecting migrant families with local parishes willing to provide those families with essential material goods and a broad support network. UB Parish Partners worked with two local churches, the St. Joseph University Parish and the Newman Center at UB, to gather donations of food, clothing, school supplies, and hygienic products while also finding parishioners willing to volunteer as sponsors for migrant families. UB Parish Partners then connected the local non-profit Justice for Migrant Families to distribute those donations and match volunteers with families. In the end, this project successfully collected over $900 in donations, distributed five carloads of non-monetary donations, and initiated twelve sponsorships. Looking forward, UB Parish Partners plans to continue expanding their efforts to more churches and additional local organizations.

Team Buffalo SOUP sought to address the need for no-strings-attached funding for projects to make Buffalo better, and the need for a space for connection, critical dialogue, and unprecedented partnerships in the Buffalo area. The team did this by creating Buffalo SOUP: a collaborative crowdfunding meal that brings together a wide range of Buffalonians with the goal of providing seed funding to one of several projects that the audience themselves vote on. The first SOUP was held at Thin Man Brewery in Elmwood Village, and it raised $655 for Project Mona’s House. Furthermore, this was a fun event that facilitated the creation of new partnerships between the many different organizations in attendance while encouraging like-minded people from all walks of life to make a difference together. The team hopes to make Buffalo SOUP a lasting initiative that carries forward the tools from Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) into the Buffalo community. In particular, Team Buffalo SOUP setting up a Board of Directors in order to form a non-profit under BootSector, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs in Western New York.

Team Traffic Cones decided to promote literacy amongst those experiencing homelessness in the Buffalo area. To tackle this, the team partnered with the Buffalo City Mission (BCM), a shelter in downtown Buffalo that provides temporary and emergency housing, among other services, for those in need. Team Traffic Cones organized book drives and tabling events across all three UB campuses. Ultimately, the team collected 1,777 books, 309 miscellaneous items (such as board games, puzzles, children's toys, and others), 250 encouragement cards, and funding for five bookcases. Through the successful completion of the project, Team Traffic Cones decreased the barriers between those facing homelessness and their access to reading materials. Beyond that, Team Traffic Cones also worked with UB’s School of Social Work to encourage their students to volunteer their time at the BCM, which will occur over the next year. Lastly, through Team Traffic Cones’ coordination, UB HEALS, a club based out of UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine, is now working with the BCM to bring a series healthcare clinics to BCM facilities.

Team Gift of Thrift addressed resource waste at UB. The team noticed that every semester, two things happen: (1) upperclassmen throw out reusable goods such as clothes and books while moving out and (2) underclassmen buy new clothes and books while moving in. Often, the items the upperclassmen throw out are exactly the sort of items that the underclassmen need. To address this issue, Team Gift of Thrift organized collection drives where UB students could donate their lightly-used clothing and books. At the end of the semester, the collected items were then sold at a pop-up thrift shop on UB’s North Campus. By all measures, the project was a success. Hundreds of items were collected, allowing underclassmen to purchase needed goods at low cost while leftover items were either donated or properly disposed. All cash proceeds from the pop-up thrift shop were donated to Hearts for the Homeless, a local Buffalo charity.

Team Prosper decided to address education inequality in the United States. Specifically, they wanted to address the fact that students from schools in low-income and inner-city areas have less successful educational outcomes due to underfunding and lack of resources. To combat this issue, Team Prosper established a program at UB where UB students will provide free tutoring services to traditionally under-served students in the Buffalo Public Schools system. This program was in partnership with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Homework Helpers in New York City, who currently plans to train and support UB students as tutors. This was the first expansion of the Homework Helpers outside of New York City, and so the goal of Homework Helpers was to use UB’s chapter as a model for expansion to other universities across the state.

Team Aspire was concerned with the lack of nutritional awareness for UB students. The first way they addressed this problem was through their team Instagram account (@ubmunchies), which included various posts on nutritional facts, restaurant highlights, and affordable recipes. Their second approach was holding a UB Day event at the North Tonawanda Farmers Market (NTFM), where Team Aspire collaborated with the NTFM and UB Transportation Services to provide students transportation to the NTFM and give them vouchers to spend at the market. The impact of this was to encourage more students to pursue changes in their lifestyle, have students consider nutritional information, and give them the tools necessary to optimize their budget and time. Team Aspire also initiated further talks between UB Parking and Transportation and the NTFM and about implementing a bus route between UB North Campus and the NTFM.

In entering this project, Team ENACT wanted to mitigate the amount of food waste that ends up in landfills. To tackle this, they partnered with Farmer Pirates Composting, a local composting facility, and set out to organize a community compost drop-off in the Village of Depew. This would have served as a test run of composting in Buffalo and would have provided Farmer Pirates with data encouraging government-sponsored composting in Western New York. Ultimately, the team was too ambitious in this endeavor and ran into hurdles they were not expecting, namely the Erie County Department of Health. As a result, Team ENACT was unable to implement this program. Although they may have failed, they also learned a lot about embracing failure and how to anticipate stakeholders (like the Department of Health) that may not be apparent upon first glance.