Jakarta – Steff Deprez, a development expert from Belgia, praised the program design implemented by Indonesia Mengajar (IM) in his visit to Jakarta on October 23.

Deprez, who has had the experience of working in various development programs in developing countries in Africa and Asia for 15 years, highlighted Indonesia Mengajar’s responsiveness in its planning, management, and program monitoring. It is most interesting on how Indonesia Mengajar carefully selected the most appropriate approach for its program and adapted them to answer practical conditions in Indonesia Mengajar’s working area. “I’m impressed,” he said with approval.

When its core program was designed in 2009, the founding team of Indonesia Mengajar decided to employ Outcome Mapping as its essential tools. The main consideration was the compatibility of Outcome Mapping’s characteristics with the program mission, which is to encourage behavioral changes among the educational stakeholders, and the nature context of the program areas, which are very diverse and dynamic .

Outcome Mapping was first introduced by International Development Research Center in 2001 to address social development challenges. It is an approach emphasizing on actor-based measurements of expected outcome changes, instead of a program’s outputs. This approach was developed to address the shortcomings of traditional approaches such as Logical Framework in the planning and development of social changes.

To learn from one another, organizations applying outcome mapping from various countries use an online portal, dubbed Outcome Mapping Learning Community (OMLC). Deprez is also a steward in the community and was involved in development programs in eastern Indonesia for four years. Therefore he completely understands the challenges Indonesia Mengajar is facing, especially in data analysis and reporting. “And yet, Indonesia Mengajar has been able to develop a reasonable system." he said.

He was also pleased to see how Indonesia Mengajar openly share this adoption of Outcome Mapping to other parties in Indonesia Mengajar’s network. “As a result, there is a critical mass of people with an understanding of OM, and the number is significant,” he said.

Hikmat Hardono, the Executive Director of Indonesia Mengajar, welcomed Deprez’s appreciation. He believed that it is necessary to reassess conventional approaches in community development in response to the constantly changing landscape of development challenges. This is especially because Indonesia Mengajar runs its program in various places in Indonesia with very dynamic environments.

As a social initiative, Indonesia Mengajar is convinced that they should use a novel approach to plan and evaluate its program. “For example, Outcome Mapping,” said the head of Indonesia Mengajar’s founding team.

During his visit to Jakarta, Deprez spoke at an Outcome Mapping introduction session initiated by Nia Kurnianingtyas, Program Advisor at Indonesia Mengajar. The session was attended by a number of activists and professionals working in various development sectors. In the same occasion, Indonesia Mengajar also presented its progress report from different areas where IM has been working on in the last four years.

Deprez is not the only one recognizing Indonesia Mengajar’s success in implementing its program in 127 schools in 17 districts from across the country using Outcome Mapping. The 2013 OMLC report entitled The Outcome Mapping Usefulness Barometer mentioned Indonesia Mengajar as one of the world’s best practices in involving stakeholders using outcome mapping. Last month, Nia also presented Indonesia Mengajar’s work at OM Lab 2014, the annual OMLC conference in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The same report also noted that the interest to use outcome mapping is growing significantly across diverse development areas.

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Rewritten into English by Masyhur Hilmy, Pengajar Muda in Banggai District, 2012-2013