Froukje Jongsma

Froukje cares deeply about making social impact measurement meaningful, empowering, and accessible for everyone, including people with lived experience. Over the past 20 years, she has worked across Australia and internationally with governments, not-for-profits, and communities. Her work has focused on place-based systems change, Understanding, Measurement, Evaluation and Learning (UMEL) capability building, and partnering with culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations peoples and communities.

One of her career highlights was co-leading the Connected Beginnings initiative in Galiwin’ku alongside Yolŋu leaders, where she helped co-create a culturally responsive UMEL approach that integrates Yolŋu and non-Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and doing. This included co-developing tools and processes to measure collaborative work and its outcomes in a remote Aboriginal community context and supporting Yolŋu-led projects such as Yolŋu Yothuw Dhukarr (A Yolŋu Child’s Pathway) and Dhäwu’mirr Dharpa (Data Trees). These experiences reinforced her belief that UMEL is most powerful when it’s inclusive, collaborative, and grounded in place.

Since 2021, she has been part of Clear Horizon’s Social Impact team, partnering with initiatives like Hands Up Mallee (HUM) to co-design MEL frameworks and lead evaluations, including HUM’s Mid-Term Evaluation. This work with HUM was recognised in 2022 with the SIMNA Award for Outstanding Collaboration in Social Impact Measurement.