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Community Stewards

The OMLC is governed by the Board of Stewards, a group of nine members from across the OMLC membership who act in a voluntary capacity as Stewards. The Community Stewards Group make decisions related to the welfare of the community in collaboration with the Community Coordinator. The Stewards are here to help you with any matters relating to the community or specific OM questions. They are very happy to answer any questions you might have but please remember that they are volunteers. You can read the terms of reference for the Stewards Group here.

The current members of the group are...

Veera Blomster

Veera Blomster

Veera’s background is in cultural anthropology and grass-roots movements focusing on environment, fair trade and interculturalism. She has worked for the rights of domestic workers in Peru and studied internal migrations related to domestic child labour. She has been a member in different boards of organisations promoting human rights, social justice and sustainability. Currently Veera works as program officer responsible for PMEL in Taksvärkki, a Finnish CSO promoting equality, youth activism and meaningful youth participation for sustainable development. She got interested in Outcome Mapping around 2012 as an approach with tools and insights supporting the values she emphasises in development cooperation: horizontal relations with two-way learning, participation and local ownership. Today OM is applied in all development cooperation work funded by her organisation. The value of OM can especially be seen in high commitment of local actors and deepening understanding of the change happening, both resulting in sustainable nature of the outcomes.

Simon Hearn

Simon Hearn

Simon is a Research Fellow in the Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) programme at the Overseas Development Institute, London, who with support from IDRC are the current secretariat for the Outcome Mapping Learning Community. Simon has coordinated the OMLC since 2007, providing facilitation support, newsletter editing, webinar hosting as well as supporting the Stewards group. He has been training individuals and organisations in OM since 2008 and has advised many programmes in the use of OM, particular for strategic planning and monitoring of policy influencing.

Glowen Kyei-Mensah

Glowen Kyei-Mensah

Glowen has over 14 years’ experience working in the development sector in two continents. This includes technical expertise and experience in monitoring and evaluation, participatory research, governance, programme design and implementation. She first started using Outcome Mapping in her work in 2010 when she monitored over 10 projects being implemented by civil society organizations and community radio stations in Ghana. Since 2013, she has been co-facilitating OM training in Ghana and continues to use the approach in project implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Glowen has worked extensively with civil society, governments, media, and other interlocutors on issues of governance, citizens’ voice and participation. Her work experience spans from the grassroots to the national and international levels.

Jeph Mathias

Jeph Mathias

An Indian/New Zealander Jeph lives in the Indian Himalayas and uses OM extensively in independent work with innovative social and environmental projects across South Asia. He is also a research fellow in Development studies at Massey University, New Zealand. Jeph’s variegated history includes a year with Mother Teresa, a Cambridge MA, teaching in apartheid South Africa, horse riding with Mongolian nomads, life in a Brazilian favela, a MSF malaria project in Colombia, trapping crocodiles in the Amazon, senior emergency doctor in New Zealand, Cambodian slum life, expedition doctor on Everest, the first traverse of the Mekong, community health in Himalayan valleys, snow leopard conservation, living in a Delhi bustee, remote surgery…Jeph has learned that human behaviour, attitudes and relationships are the constant undercurrent beneath all social and environmental issues so he sees OM thinking continuing to inform his work on this unpredictable planet.

Heidi Schaeffer

Heidi Schaeffer

Heidi has a masters of education in transformative change with a deep commitment to equity, inclusion and community-based social change work. She has a background in development communication working with rural radio stations in South-East Asia, Africa and with Indigenous communities in Canada. It was through evaluating radio for development projects that she first discovered Outcome Mapping in 2005. Heidi’s consulting group, “Advancing Change Together” supports learning-oriented and outcomes-based planning, monitoring and evaluation, working in organizational change, networks and leadership development in health care and public health. She appreciates the power of Outcome Mapping and Outcome Harvesting to strengthen strategic learning, adaptation, program implementation and multi-sectoral systems change initiatives.

Mariam Smith

Mariam Smith

Mariam has mostly lived and worked in Asia, but currently works as an independent consultant based in Sweden. After years of struggling with linear approaches, her experience of introducing OM while managing an action research and community development programme among indigenous people in Cambodia 2010-2015 convinced Mariam of OM’s potential. She found that OM gave space for staff to work with complex situations in a dynamic, relational and actor-focused way; it enhanced learning, enabled adaptation, and changed communication. In her masters thesis in pedagogy, she continued to explore these cultural changes in other organisations throughout Asia, and discovered similar stories. Now she works with local organisations and funders supporting them in developing learning frameworks, merging pedagogy and development practice.

Richard Smith

Richard Smith

Richard has worked as a fish salesman serving restaurants in London, forestry field assistant in Sri Lanka, coordinator at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and senior manager for CABI where he led the BioNET secretariat serving a member-country science-for-development advocacy and capacity building network. He started using OM in 2010 for strategic planning and in 2011 used the Outcome Harvesting tool for evaluation. He left CABI in 2011 to begin a career as an evaluator of social change initiatives and funding programmes with a focus on adapting the Outcome Harvesting tool. Currently he combines freelance work with an Associate Director role at Proforest, an international not-for-profit where he leads on M&E.



OMLC Advisors

Past stewards and others who have made considerable contribution to the community are invited to join the group of OM Advisors. The group currently includes the following people:

Goele Scheers

Goele Scheers

Goele started working with Outcome Mapping in 2005 in her position as PM&E Coordinator at the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). In 2007, she contributed to developing the Outcome Harvesting approach and integrated it in the monitoring system of the network. Currently she works as a consultant and shares her passion for OM and OH with organisations and institutions around the world. Goele supports organisations in using these approaches through training, coaching and conducting OH evaluations.

Ziad Moussa

Ziad Moussa

Mr. Ziad Moussa is the President of the International Organization of Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE), and the Co-Chair of EvalPartners. The IOCE represents the 155 national and regional Voluntary Organization for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs) around the world. It strengthens international evaluation through the exchange of evaluation methods, theories and practice, and promotes good governance and recognition of the value evaluation has in improving peoples’ lives. EvalPartners is an innovative partnership to enhance the capacities of Civil Society Organizations (CSO) to influence policy makers, public opinion and other key stakeholders so that public policies are based on evidence, and incorporate considerations of equity and effectiveness. EvalPartners brings together over 45 international development agencies, regional evaluation networks, foundations, NGOs and others. Ziad has over 20 years of experience in leading complex multi-country evaluations across the Arab world and the Global South in well over 40 countries and with almost every major donor on the circuit. His “evaluation first love” is the Middle East and North Africa Evaluators Network (EvalMENA) which he helped establish back in 2011. Ziad is also member of the Advisory Board of the Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium (PEC) and an Advisor to the Board of Stewards of the Outcome Mapping Learning Community (OMLC)

Julius Nyangaga

Julius Nyangaga

Julius is currently the CEO of Right Track Africa, a company of professionals established as a private firm in Kenya, providing services in strategy development, facilitating innovative solutions, and program/project monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Before joining Right Track Africa in October, 2013, Julius worked for more than 10 years with the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) both in Nairobi, Kenya. Julius interest and passion is the value of outcome-oriented focus in organizational and project strategy, monitoring systems and evaluation. He has been a Steward of the Outcome Mapping Learning Community since its formation in 2006

Steff Deprez

Steff Deprez

Steff started to use OM in 2004 where he was part of the team pioneering OM for the design and monitoring of an Environmental Education Programme of VVOB (St2eep) in Zimbabwe. From 2006 till 2010, he worked as Programme Advisor for Vredeseilanden's (VECO) country programme in Indonesia. During this time, he facilitated the development of an OM-based framework for VECOs value chain programmes and a learning-oriented monitoring system, i.e. the Planning, Learning and Accountability system (PLAs). Steff provided a series of in-house and public OM trainings and advised different programmes exploring the use of OM. In 2010, he co-authored and coordinated the compilation of a contextualised Indonesian Outcome Mapping manual (2010). Steff is working as an independent M&E consultant (based in Belgium). He has a keen interest in contextualising OM to fit specific programme needs and setting up a relevant, useful and pragmatic monitoring and learning practice.

Jan Van Ongevalle

Jan Van Ongevalle

Jan is working as research manager of the international development cooperation unit at the Research Institute of Work and Society (HIVA) linked to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Through various action research programmes, Jan and his colleagues are seeking to strengthen Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) practice in international development programmes. Since 2005, Jan has implemented outcome mapping in various development programmes. Jan also supports other organisations in their PME practice. After having been a steward of the outcome mapping learning community (2008 to early 2012), Jan is now an advisor to the stewards.

Plus Beatrice Briggs, Sarah Earl, Terry Smutylo and Fred Carden.


América Latina & el Caribe África Subsahariana África del Norte & Oriente Medio Asia Meridional Sudeste Asiático & Pacífico Far-East Asia Europa Oriental & CEI (exURSS) Europa Occidental América del Norte & Canadá Australasia