The biggest social, political, and economic challenges affecting people in developing countries are multi-faceted and complex. The Penn Development Research Initiative (PDRI) – DevLab@Penn brings together faculty and graduate students from 7 schools across the University of Pennsylvania whose research seeks to identify solutions to the challenges facing developing countries. PDRI-DevLab seeks to foster impactful international development research by harnessing the expertise of its affiliates from various disciplines and utilizing diverse methodological approaches. PDRI-DevLab serves as a launchpad for extramurally-funded research projects that include collaborations with international NGOs, local NGOs, and government agencies while also serving as an intellectual hub for Penn faculty and graduate students conducting research in developing countries.
The purpose of the RESTORE Activity is to demonstrate a scalable and regionally replicable model for community-led governance, natural resource management, and biodiversity conservation that aligns with regional and government priorities in cocoa production landscapes in the Guinean forests of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. The RESTORE Activity envisions that in partnership with multinational chocolate companies, farmer cooperatives, and local partners, it will establish the technical capacity, policy implementation approaches and economic incentives to bring cocoa producing families, governments and private sector together in a joint endeavour to secure improved livelihoods from cocoa farming, socially inclusive additional economic opportunities, increased tree cover and a scalable contribution to national and corporate emission reductions targets. The activity works at both farm and landscape scales, and seeks to support an inclusive landscape management governance body in selected target areas to drive resilient economic growth, with expanded opportunities for women and youth based on sustainable resource use. RESTORE is funded by USAID.
RESTORE's specific objectives include increasing tree cover on and off farm in the cocoa production in four landscapes in the Guinean forest in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.
Baseline data collection is complete in Ghana and CDI. A number of qualitative and quantitative data sources were collected. The research task for this capstone involves qualitative data analysis of the focus group discussions and interviews collected during baseline.
- Complete analysis of qualitative data sources for the RESTORE baseline data collection. This includes Focus Group Discussions and Semi-structured interviews in Ghana and CDI. The coding and analysis can be completed in Dedoose, NVivo, or Taguette. Penn Libraries provides support for qualitative data analysis.
- Draft a 10-15 page synthesis report of the findings.
2024-2025
