Outcome harvesting is a monitoring and evaluation methodology that helps to understand how change agents - such as the Danish Institute for Human Rights and our partners (when we work in partnership) - are achieving results and the means we use to support, facilitate, or drive human rights change.
It documents the expected and unexpected, short, medium and long-term outcomes of the work of the Institute and our partners.
Outcome harvesting has six steps and must follow nine principles. It is possible to amend the six steps according to what is useful or possible, but the nine principles must always be respected.
The roles in outcome harvesting are: harvester, change agent, social actor and harvest users.
You can get an overview of outcome harvesting process and principles in this document.
Learn more in the video below.
An outcome emerges when somebody does something differently as a result of what we and/or our partner did. Outcomes are formulated in outcome statements.
We define an outcome as:
An observable and significant change in a social actor’s behaviour (relationships, activities, policies or practice) that has been achieved and that has been influenced by the intervention.
The outcomes are formulated in outcome statements that have three elements: the outcome, the significance and our (as well as others) contribution.
Every outcome statement should answer the questions of: who, when, where, what, so what, and how?
You can learn more in the video below.
Outcome harvesting is designed for situations where we want to know more about achievements rather than activities and more about what changed rather than what we did.
The outcome harvesting methodology is particularly useful in complex programming contexts where results cannot be predicted and where a number of actors and factors affect the outcomes.
It is also useful when the goal is to understand the process of change and how each outcome contributes to that change, rather than simply accumulate a list of activities, inputs, outputs, milestones and outcomes.
You can learn more about the benefits of outcome harvesting in the video below.
Credits: All videos have been produced in a cooperation between DIHR, DCA, Dignity, AADK and ACT CoS.
