Outcome Harvesting: Justice, power and looking backward

In this post, Michelle Garred and Matteah Spencer Reppart suggest that Outcome Harvesting has the potential to disrupt culturally Western assumptions in program evaluation through the use of retrospective logic. Outcome Harvesting (OH) is unique among evaluation approaches because it looks backward in time to identify outcomes, rather than relying on the advance prediction of detailed results. Outcome Harvesting creator Ricardo Wilson-Grau explained this as a suitable approach for evaluation in complex contexts, with which we wholeheartedly agree. We also see something more: By looking differently at time, Outcome Harvesting can help to shift power dynamics by honoring multiple ways of working, thinking and knowing. We wrote this piece for the global OH community of practice – an excellent resource for those interested in learning more about Outcome Harvesting.