Browsing by Author "Bermeo, Sarah"
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Item Open Access Artificial Intelligence for added value in the creation, implementation, and evaluation of national export strategies(2022-04-22) Rodríguez, EugeniaA National Export Strategy (NES) is an action plan that sets priorities, allocates resources, and specifies actions to strengthen an economy’s international trade capabilities, seeking to enhance its economic growth and development. In recent times there was an increase in the number of national initiative documents concerning strategic trade and development, with many developing countries facing challenges to ensure their trade dynamics effectively and efficiently contribute to their long-term sustainable development. In this context, technology can be a helpful tool in the NES process. Based on a literature review, use cases, and expert interviews, this report aims to inform the International Trade Centre (ITC) of key ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) can add value to the creation, implementation, and evaluation of a NES. It also identifies important considerations, challenges, and limitations regarding AI adoption in the NES process, and provides conclusions and high-level recommendations.Item Open Access Foreign-Aid Donors’ Allocation Preferences across Bilateral and Multilateral Channels(2011-04-27) Woollacott, JaredThis paper examines how developed countries allocate foreign aid to less developed countries. In giving aid, countries act on a variety of motives that have received much attention in academic literature. I focus on three motives: geopolitical, commercial, and humanitarian. Once being motivated to give aid, a donor must decide how it will do so. Broadly, the donor can use bilateral or multilateral channels – it can act alone or with its peers. Each method comes with particular costs and benefits for donors, and one channel might better serve certain motives than another might. The primary task of this work is to identify for which criteria major donors exhibit strong channel preferences.1 Donors exhibit a strong multilateral bias in allocating on democracy (humanitarian) and capital openness (commercial). These criteria share certain characteristics that make them likely candidates for multilateral channels. First, both objectives are widely shared by major western donors. Second, they both confer broad benefits that are difficult for donors to particularize to certain interest groups. Third, they are critical aspects of a country’s political and economic control, requiring large-scale coordinated efforts if donors hope to induce changes in recipient governments. By expressing these preferences through multilateral channels, donors capitalize on these collective action benefits multilaterals confer. Donors (aside from the United States) also exhibit a strong multilateral bias in supplementing US military support. Here, in pursuing their geopolitical interests, donors capitalize on the legitimacy benefits offered by multilateral agencies. By contrast, donors express strong bilateral biases with respect to former colonies and property rights. Colonial history is a nearly exclusive relationship among donors and recipients, the benefits of which donors are not inclined to share with other donors. Nor should we expect donors to be able to solicit other donors to support them in reaping these exclusive gains. Though property rights confer broad-based benefits, they do not enjoy as uniformly expressed preferences as do capital openness and democracy. Property rights also pose much less threat to the autonomy of recipient governments than does democracy or capital openness, making the need for coordinated action less acute. The differences in how donors use multilateral agencies for allocating aid helps to shed light on why they use them. Multilateral agencies offer donors legitimacy in their geopolitical behavior and provide valuable collective action mechanisms for pursuing common goals that have broad benefits and face strong opposition. These results highlight legitimacy and collective action as two primary benefits of multilateral aid agencies and help explain why donors employ both bilateral and multilateral channels in the manner and to the extent they do in giving aid.Item Open Access Providing Mental Health Access to Unauthorized Children and Citizen-Children of Unauthorized Parents in Durham Area Schools(2021-05-14) Luther, NatashaWorld Relief Durham (WRD) is in the process of creating an intervention program that would support the effort to provide mental health access to unauthorized Hispanic children/youth, and citizen-children of unauthorized parents in Durham area schools. This research project contains interviews with World Relief National Offices, local experts, and Durham area schools. Language, finances, needs assessments, and fear of deportation were all barriers to mental health access that interviewees identified for unauthorized students in Durham. WRD must take the following steps to improve mental health access for unauthorized children and citizen-children of unauthorized parents in Durham: 1. Close the access gaps to mental health services by becoming a mental health provider, funding mental health service sessions, and identifying mental health service needs. 2. Build community partnerships by providing trainings for Durham school social workers and getting licensed for anti-human trafficking support. 3. Assist unauthorized parents by interviewing them, providing language assistance, removing stigma surrounding mental health, and introducing community resources. 4. Gather resources for high schoolers that can be used during and after graduation. These strategies will help build upon services that are already in place by community organizations and enhance the overall process for unauthorized children, and citizen-children of unauthorized parents to receive mental health services.Item Open Access Recommendations to Refine Grupo Faro's Monitoring and Evaluation Tools for the "Comunidades de Aprendizaje" Program(2020-04-29) Duchicela, ShylahThis report provides recommendations on how to strengthen and synthesize the monitoring and evaluation tools developed for Grupo Faro’s main education program. Grupo Faro is a think-tank based in Quito, Ecuador who, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education has been implementing learning communities in over 10 schools in the country since 2017. Grupo Faro serves as an advisor to each school, identifying and resolving any ongoing implementation challenges. At the same time, they also evaluate the program by gathering and acting upon relevant quantitative and qualitative information through surveys, interviews and focus groups. The education system in Ecuador has undergone transformative changes over the past two decades, including a renewed emphasis on rigorous evaluation to design and implement education practices. Notable accomplishments include students’ improved academic performance in national and international tests and universal access to education in the country. However, there are still persistent issues experienced in how students learn, the way teachers are trained, and how engaged and influential family members are in the school-system’s decision-making process. Additionally, there are concerning inequities among students from low-income backgrounds, rural locations and self-identified ethnic/linguistic minorities. Learning communities are a multi-faceted, dynamic education model developed by the University of Barcelona Community of Research on Excellence for All (CREA). European’s Commission Project Include-ed studied the model's impact and effect on school systems from 2006-2011. The studies present strong evidence that suggests learning communities can have a positive impact in all school communities, but particularly those most vulnerable. As a result, many countries including many in South America, have replicated and adapted the model. Learning communities’ principal goal is to improve how students learn. Equally important goals are to increase the students’ analytical and critical thinking skills, levels of engagement and sense of belonging and inclusion. Learning communities aim to improve how every individual in the school community interacts with one another. In order to achieve this, the intervention consists of a variety of methods called “Actuaciones Educativas de Exito” or successful educational practices (SEAs). There are six SEAs that are most salient in Ecuador’s context: family education, dialogic literary gatherings, mixed commissions, conflict prevention and resolution, interactive groups and dialogic pedagogical trainings. In other contexts, learning communities have been leveraged to alleviate many of the challenges Ecuador’s education system exhibits. In 2019, the Ministry of Education assumes the role of replicating learning communities to new schools. Grupo Faro will provide support and advice to the Ministry of Education staff on how to implement correctly and successfully, while continuing to support schools initially selected into the pilot program. Given that the implementation will rest on another stakeholder, and considering that maintaining model fidelity is an inherent challenge encountered when reproducing across contexts, Grupo Faro wanted to revisit, refine and strengthen their current monitoring and evaluation system. After in-depth discussions with the client, we identified the research question to be: “What should Grupo Faro do to refine their monitoring and evaluation tools in their “learning communities” program”. To answer this question, I developed a logic model, analyzed current tools and conducted site visits in Quito and Manta. Chapter 6 expands on the methods used further. This report discusses Ecuador’s education system in Chapter 1, and examines the research and development of learning communities in Europe and Latin America in Chapter 4. Chapter 7 explains Grupo Faro’s current monitoring and evaluation system, which includes: Attitudes’ and Perception Survey 2017 & 2019, and focus groups differentiated by stakeholder (teachers, students, school leaders, and parents). Grupo Faro also collected relevant quantitative data such as students’ academic performance and attendance. All tools coalesce on four main broad dimensions: changes in teaching and learning, in community participation, in leadership, and in conflict prevention and resolution. Chapter 9 summarizes site visit observations conducted in December for each SEA, and synthesizes interviews. This insights and discussion section draws from primary observations, and previous qualitative data collected by Grupo Faro.Item Open Access Supporting Media Development in Armenia(2014-04-28) Shelton, JulianneCurrently in Armenia, media plurality is hindered by informal practices as well as formal structures. The makeup of the regulating body over television and radio is politically influenced, the public broadcaster is in service to the ruling power rather than the people, and private TV stations are not truly independent. A healthy media will support democracy by representing a collective voice for the Armenian people, as well as allowing for individuals to hold government accountable as they gain access to accurate and relevant information. This project examines media assistance programs carried out in two other countries: Georgia and Moldova, to see what recommendations may be made for USAID Armenia. The strategy for answering this policy question involved four major components: 1. Literature review of implications of free and independent media on development 2. In depth review of the media landscape in Armenia 3. Case studies of major media projects completed in Georgia and Moldova 4. Interviews with 13 key informants from Georgia, Moldova and Armenia.Item Open Access The Balancing Act: Freedom of Speech and Inclusivity on U.S. College Campuses(2017-12-07) Khanna, SakshiCollege campuses are faced with reconciling two opposing values—promoting freedom of speech and ideological diversity, versus censoring speech that marginalizes minority students and threatens the learning environment. Colleges have instated speech codes of varying degrees of harshness in order to limit offensive speech. This study assesses whether undergraduate students’ attitudes toward freedom of speech differ depending on whether they attend universities with restrictive versus unrestrictive speech policies. I administered an anonymous survey to undergraduates at Duke, Emory and Davidson. The findings illustrated a likemindedness across college-generation students despite varying speech policies at their universities. Students revealed a slight preference for curtailing offensive speech in order to protect minority sentiments and foster a positive learning environment. Females were more likely than men to take action against offensive speech. The results also illustrated how a majority of respondents felt that students would feel uncomfortable with expressing their socially conservative views. This trend was observed across the three schools and both genders. In conclusion, colleges are becoming increasingly more inclusive of minorities, but students with conservative viewpoints are being forced to self-censor, thereby limiting constructive ideological discourse on U.S college campuses.Item Open Access The Differential Effect of Governance on Aid to the Water/Sanitation and Health Sectors: An Analysis(2012-04-20) Waly, AliaA swathe of research attests to the importance of governance in achieving economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. Whether governance has an equal effect across sectors, however, is a question that has been neglected empirically. This study adds to the literature by examining the differential impacts of governance on aid to the water/sanitation and health sectors. I used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) to estimate the effect of health aid and water/sanitation aid on immunization rates and access to improved water and sanitation sources, respectively. My data on aid is from the OECD; I collected annual data for 5 aid flows: health aid, basic health aid, water/sanitation aid, water aid for large projects and sanitation aid for large projects, from 1996 to 2009. Annual data on immunization rates from 1990 to 2009 were collected from the World Bank World Development Indicators, and data on access to an improved water source and access to improved sanitation were collected from the WHO; 5 data points were available on this indicator. My covariates include governance, civil war, GDP per capita, GDP growth (percentage), decentralization, an indicator variable for Africa and log of population, which is consistent with the literature. I found that governance had a statistically significant impact on aid to the water and sanitation sectors—the sanitation sector appeared to be most negatively affected by poor governance—and no impact on aid to the health sector. These findings have potential implications for donor funding; they provide evidence that governance does not have an equal effect across sectors and that sector-level analysis of governance conditions in countries is important to undertake before giving aid. This study could also support increased aid to the water sector, as donor fears that aid will be squandered in the sector could be assuaged with these findings and the findings of other studies that (hopefully) will follow, which show that aid could be increased where good governance warrants it. While the water/sanitation sector is the subject of multiple Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets and indicators, making it more of a donor priority than many other sectors, like production or civil society, for example, the proportion of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the water/sanitation sector has actually decreased since 2000, when the MDGs were initiated.Item Open Access The Political Economy of Gender in Global Health: How International Actors Shape Women’s Outcomes(2023) Hunter, KellyThis dissertation investigates the politics of global health and how international actors shape women’s outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. Using a three-paper model, it consists of three separate studies that highlight the interconnectedness of gender, health, and international politics. The first paper explores the spillover effects of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) implemented in Migori, Kenya in support of the World Health Organization’s cervical cancer elimination strategy. An original follow-up survey was administered to women living in the intervention and control villages to understand the RCT’s impact on non-medical outcomes. The second paper focuses on the international politics of foreign aid for family planning and demonstrates that a country’s response to dynamics within the international arena can determine how and why countries choose to contribute to policies that target women. Specifically, it investigates the international response when the United States, the largest aid donor, withdraws funding for family planning through its Mexico City Policy, better known as the “global gag rule.” The third paper looks at foreign aid termination more broadly, and how the use of this sanction instrument by the United Nations, United States, and European Union affects women’s health and safety in the target countries. These papers employ quantitative methods on a variety of data sources, ranging from original survey data collected in rural, western Kenya, to observational data on a range of indicators for multiple countries. Taken together, these studies show that women in low- and middle-income countries are subjected to consequences that stem from the political actions of international players.