ABOUT US
Salanga was founded in 2007 with the goal to provide training to NGOs. Since then, the team, portfolio and reach have grown and Salanga is now recognized by donors and organizations around the world.
Vision
Our vision is a world where civil society and non-profit organizations from humanitarian, international development, social and environmental sectors are confident, professional and working in efficient, universally beneficial partnerships with each other, public and private sectors and local communities. Our role is to contribute to sustainable, community-centered collaboration.
Mission
Salanga delivers training, consultancy, and support to organizations that address poverty, malnutrition, health issues, social exclusion and the effects of climate change impacting communities and individuals around the world. We believe in true partnerships and aim to guide our partner organizations to achieve their goals, preserve their principles and become stronger and more accountable to their target communities and donors. We believe that any organization can effectively measure its impact and deliver high-quality results while keeping their employees safe. It is a constant journey for all organizations, regardless of their size or location, and we are proud to join them on this journey – to help promote best practices, share lessons learned and uphold ethical principles in their work.
Our Approach
Place Partnership & Participation First
Our role is to provide the technical skills, know-how and tools to work with our partners in a collaborative and learning-focused way. We expect and require engagement and participation from stakeholders in order to learn together, build capacity and ensure the very best outcomes.
Engage & Empower
We support people-centered development by focusing on improving communities’ self-reliance, social justice and participatory decision-making. We elevate local voices and perspectives to enable project participants to inform and influence their own knowledge systems and, in turn, the projects and policies that affect them. We co-design data collection tools and systems that aim to be accessible and empowering for all stakeholders (particularly communities and front-line staff).
Prioritize Utilization
Project management and monitoring and evaluation systems fail when they are too complex, too resource intense, too costly, and ultimately don’t meet the needs of the end users. We embrace the “utilization-focused” approach developed by Michael Quinn Patton that is based on the principle that systems and software should be planned for and implemented in order to enhance the likely utilization of both the findings and of the process itself to inform decisions and improve performance.
Feminist Approach
We design tools and systems that collect, store, analyze and share information that makes a difference to the lives of vulnerable communities and populations – in particular women and girls. We help organizations step-up their commitment to gender-sensitive evidence-based decision making by boosting their ability to design indicators that capture gender gaps and track changes in gender equality throughout their projects. We also support data collection processes that better engage women and girls and that ensure project participants play a stronger role in data analysis, interpretation and sharing. We are committed to playing a central role in improving data collection and evaluation for gender equality.
Learning & Self-Reflection
We promote an ‘evaluative culture’ within organizations by embracing feedback, incentivizing learning and finding ways to share data more openly and easily. We build processes and practices within Salanga to learn from our experience and share what we learn. We support our partners in learning from their data by creating conscious spaces for shared reflection and improvement. We make and support evidence-informed decision making. We build in time and processes to reflect and take stock of how we are doing as an organization and a team, and how we can do better. We invest in communities of practice to share and exchange best practices and failures.
Salanga’s Journey
How did Salanga start? “In 2007, we came together as a group of people working in international development with an idea to create an organization that motivated NGOs to take the security of their staff seriously. A few years later, Salanga – in partnership with ADRA, a global humanitarian network – received a grant from the Czech Development Agency to build security awareness modules and train staff from central Europe. Over the years we have trained hundreds of aid workers, technical experts, students and volunteers. Sadly, in 2013 Salanga lost our co-founder, Jakub Vanek, who never returned from a high-altitude mountain climbing trip in Nepal.”
But now, Salanga focuses on much more than security issues, right? “We realized that organizations have other challenges too – such as how to measure the impact of projects, how to ensure projects are sustainable and using best practices, and how to secure funding from donors. This led us to expand our work into these areas and really allowed our team to grow and engage individuals with high-quality technical expertise. We also decided to create our own tool for monitoring and evaluation, Kinaki.
Where is Salanga now? “At this point, we have well-established partnerships with organizations around the world and are very happy to see our partners grow and do their work better, with more professionalism and with greater impact. We work with organizations in many countries and they not only stay loyal to us as their partner but also recommend us to other organizations who may be struggling to measure impact or achieve their goals.”
From an interview with Salanga’s co-founder, Jakub Nemec.
Salanga International Team
We are based around the world
We operate from two main offices in Ottawa, Canada and Pilsen, Czech Republic, with team members based around the world. Due to the nature of our work we do our best to remain connected and accessible to our global organizational partners wherever they may be based.
Meet Salanga's Core Team
Executive Director
Jakub has worked in the field of international development and humanitarian aid for over a decade. In 2007 he founded Salanga. He is a practitioner at heart and draws on his experience to support Salanga’s partners in everything from program design to safety and security. Jakub understands the many demands and challenging contexts facing our partners, he ensures that Salanga is always providing customized and high quality support.
Director of Collaborative Evaluation, Learning and Impact
Meet Paula, a dynamic leader with over 20 years of hands-on experience transforming monitoring and evaluation systems across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Paula’s superpower? Listening deeply and improving MEL systems to integrate gender equality and inclusion, ensuring everyone’s voices are heard and valued. She’s passionate about using data to drive smart decision-making, but she’s not just about crunching numbers—she’s all about systems that ignite learning and foster knowledge sharing from the grassroots up.
Paula is a committed advocate for gender equality and inclusion. She champions gender transformative programming, ensuring that every project she collaborates with doesn’t just meet immediate needs but sparks lasting, systemic change.
With Paula, it’s all about fostering collaborative spaces, building connections, and encouraging personal transformation, not just professional growth.
Want to collaborate with someone who’s not just experienced, but truly inspiring? Paula’s your go-to.
Partnership Lead
Meet Christina, a calm and empathetic leader with over 15 years of experience in the NGO world. Since 2007, Christina has worked with nonprofits, starting in project management and working with teams in Asia and Africa on results-based management and gender equality policies. She later excelled in proposal development, helping organizations secure essential funding.
With a Masters of Social Work, she brings a social justice perspective to her work, always striving for equitable solutions.
Christina’s strength? Building strong relationships and ensuring client success for Kinaki. She is passionate about Kinaki’s ability to empower project implementers by providing access to crucial data for meaningful decision-making.
With Christina, it’s all about creating connections, supporting client success, and driving impactful change. She fosters collaborative spaces where listening and empathy lead to innovative solutions and lasting relationships.
Want to collaborate with someone who’s not just experienced, but truly insightful and empathetic? Christina is your go-to.
Finance & Well-being Lead
Meet Martina, a dedicated professional with over 14 years of experience in the NGO sector. Martina’s journey has spanned project management, security management, training and facilitation, finance, and budgeting. These diverse roles and environments have shaped her into a calm, observant, and confident leader. Martina’s strength? Embracing the present moment and fostering conscious behavior in every aspect of her work.
Martina is passionate about promoting a more efficient, successful, and conscious workplace where tasks are approached with presence and awareness in order to nurture the team’s growth—both personal and professional.
Martina is committed to promoting ways to adopt a mindful approach to CoLMEAL, empowering local CoLMEAL Committees to create environments based on listening, understanding, and respect for everyone’s unique needs without judgment or fear.
Looking to collaborate with someone who brings a calm, confident, and mindful approach to their work? Martina is your ideal partner.
Community-led MEAL (CoLMEAL) Advisor
Meet Alex, a dedicated leader with over 20 years of experience in community development. His expertise spans natural resource management, child-centered community development, integrated conservation and development, disaster relief, early recovery, rehabilitation and resilience, and maternal and child health and nutrition. At Salanga, Alex leads the testing, development and evidence work of the Community-Led Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (CoLMEAL) approach.
Alex is committed to driving innovation in community development through CoLMEAL, and his work highlights the importance of local ownership and inclusive participation, making sure that even the most marginalized voices are heard and valued.
With Alex, it’s all about empowering communities and sharing knowledge to drive meaningful change.
Looking to collaborate with someone deeply committed to innovative, community-led development? Alex is your go-to expert.
MEAL Manager
Molly is passionate about building partnerships, sharing best practices, and developing tools and processes that bring projects to life. She brings to Salanga experience from across the development sector, including past work with the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, Grand Challenges Canada, Global Affairs Canada, and College of the Rockies/VETA in Tanzania. Molly holds an MA from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, where she focused on Program Management, Gender and African Studies.
Remote Training Specialist
Natasha Tariq is a Remote Training Specialist at Salanga. She has worked for various international development organizations and NGOs in the US and is passionate about education. At Salanga, she is designing and adapting content for online and offline capacity building sessions in the field of Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL). She works on creating effective and accessible online training to reach learners in low-resource settings. She also builds courses on the Learning Management System (LMS), based on Salanga’s training needs and manages uptake by new users.
Senior Program Advisor
Joseph holds a master’s degree in occupational health and a bachelor’s in health education. With over three years as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist at ADRA Philippines, Joseph is passionate about using data to drive impactful programming. He is committed to community-led development and ensuring meaningful project monitoring and evaluation.
