Girl Develop It (GDI) is a nonprofit organization devoted to getting women the materials they need to pursue careers in

software development Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...

. Founded in 2010 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, GDI provides affordable programs for adult women interested in learning web and software development in a judgment-free environment. GDI's mission is to give women of any income level, nationality, education level, and upbringing an environment in which to learn the skills to build websites and learn

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

to build programs with hands-on classes. Although at one time active in both the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, GDI currently maintains active community chapters exclusively in the

. In 2018, responding to allegations of racism that had been leveled towards both staff and chapter leaders within the organization, the majority of active chapter leaders, volunteers, and organizers issued a letter to the board demanding a change in leadership and active transparency from the organization.

History

Girl Develop It was started in 2010 by Vanessa Hurst and Sara Chipps in

. GDI started with just one class that sold out in one day. In 2017, the organization reported chapters in 53 cities in 33 states and districts in the

and one in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. In January 2019, following controversies surrounding transparency and efficacy of the GDI staff after allegations of racism, former chapter leaders estimated that only three chapters were actively organizing classes. As of July 2019 GDI lists 55,000 members in 60 chapters in the

and none in other countries. However, only five of these chapters are actively organizing classes and events.

Founders

Vanessa Hurst

Hurst is a

computer programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

social entrepreneur Social entrepreneurship is an approach by individuals, groups, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a wide range of o ...

, teacher, and lifetime

girl scout Girl Guides (known as Girl Scouts in the United States and some other countries) is a worldwide movement, originally and largely still designed for girls and women only. The movement began in 1909 when girls requested to join the then-grassroot ...

, and a co-founder of Girl Develop It. In 2013 she launched the CodeMontage platform. She is also responsible for founding and running Developers For Good and also NYC-based Network of Technologists. She is currently based in

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Cha ...

. Hurst served on the board of GDI until the 2018 controversy, at which point she resigned her position on the board.

Controversies

On August 19, 2018, the leadership of a GDI chapter in Minneapolis were accused of discriminating against a woman of color via a Twitter post. In the post, a community member brought allegations to light that indicated two white GDI chapter leaders in Minneapolis had actively excluded another chapter leader in the Minneapolis chapter who is a woman of color. These actions resulted in her stepping down as a chapter leader. As a result of the lack of acknowledgement of this incident by the GDI Executive Director and board members, another chapter leader decided to step down from her position citing "race and feminism and the way organizations deal with being called out" as one of the reasons for leaving. On December 3, 2018, further allegations of racism towards women of color came to light, this time from a former GDI HQ employee in an episode of the #causeascene podcast. In the episode, the former employee details many ways in which she experienced racism during her time working with GDI leadership, which ultimately led to her resigning from her position. On December 7, 2018, various Chapter Leaders across the United States released an open letter to GDI HQ and board, demanding change in leadership due to racism allegations. By December 10, 2018, at least two chapters across the United States decided to go on hiatus in protest. On December 12, 2018, GDI released an official statement of acknowledgement, outlining policy changes to address issues. Founder Vanessa Hurst stepped down from her position as board chair on December 11, 2018. Executive Director Corinne Warnshuis resigned in April 2019. Former GDI chapter leaders, instructors, and volunteers created the hashtag #gdistrike to share updates and information about the controversy on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. The organizers have also created a detailed timeline of events that is updated periodically with news about active chapters and leadership changes.

Staff

Katie Franco was selected as the organization's Executive Director in February 2020, ten months after Warnshuis' resignation. Bindu Jallabah serves as the GDI Operations Director. Prior to joining GDI, Jallabah won awards for her work developing and executing the operational strategy for the Elwyn Baring Street Center. Bindu is also founder and Board Chair of Karanso Africa.

Board

As of July 2021, the GDI Executive Board includes the following individuals. (March 2020 board members.) * Brenda Jin * Janelle Jolley * Erynn Petersen *

Kaya Thomas Kaya Thomas (born 1995) is an Americans, American programmer, app developer. She is the creator of ''We Read Too'', an iOS app that helps readers discover books for and by people of color. Thomas is a volunteer mentor with Black Girls Code and a ...

* Jeseekia Vaughn * Linnea Spampinato * Caity Campos * Rebecca Sadwick Shaddix * Erkeda DeRouen * Liliana Post * Ellen Beardsley

Activities

Chapters

There are five chapters of GDI, located in

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Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

Detroit, MI Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the ...

New York, NY New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and

San Francisco, CA San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

Curriculum

Girl Develop It (GDI) offers materials on their website that are licensed under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license and that provide visitors with tools and resources to

develop Develop or DEVELOP may refer to: * ''Develop'' (magazine), a trade publication for the video game industry * ''Develop'' (Apple magazine), a technical magazine formerly published by Apple Computer *Develop (chess), moving a piece from its original ...

online. The curriculum is hosted and constructed by the GDI community on the web-based version control repository

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

and presented in a slide format, divided by topic. On the GitHub curriculum page, materials are broken up in a color coded format that shows whether they have been reviewed by other members of the community or if the topics meet the requirements or recommendations of the curriculum. These materials are used for in-person instruction. As of July 2019 GDI shares ten course curricula through their

repository. Four courses have been updated in 2019, two were last updated in 2018, one was last updated in 2017, and three were last updated in 2016.

Online Learning

In March 2020, amidst the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, in an email newsletter, GDI announced that all classes would be moved to a virtual platform.

Hackathons

The organization and local chapters have hosted or participated in

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...

s. During the Buffalo chapter's second event in 2016, developers competed to create

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

s for nonprofit woman- and minority-owned organizations. The organization has also hosted hackathons in Camden, in Wilmington, and in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Supporters

GDI lists numerous companies and organizations on their website that have backed, partnered with, or supported them and their cause.

Named Partners

As of July 2021, GDI does not include any named partners on their website.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Educational charities based in the United States Information technology charities Youth charities Organizations for women in science and technology Computer science education