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 inv ...

. Founded in 2010 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

, 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 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 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

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 tota ...

, 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 Vanessa may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Vanessa (Millais painting), ''Vanessa'' (Millais painting), an 1868 painting by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais * ''Vanessa'', a 1933 novel by Hugh Walpole * ''Vanessa'', a 1952 instrument ...

and

Sara Chipps Sara may refer to: Arts, media and entertainment Film and television * ''Sara'' (1992 film), 1992 Iranian film by Dariush Merhjui * ''Sara'' (1997 film), 1997 Polish film starring Bogusław Linda * ''Sara'' (2010 film), 2010 Sri Lankan Sinhal ...

. 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 ...

, 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 Developer may refer to: Computers *Software developer, a person or organization who develop programs/applications *Video game developer, a person or business involved in video game development, the process of designing and creating games *Web deve ...

and also NYC-based

Network of Technologists Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. 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 ...

. 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

stepped down from her position as board chair on December 11, 2018. Executive Director

Corinne Warnshuis __NOTOC__ Corinne may refer to: Places * Corinne, Saskatchewan, Canada, an unincorporated community * Corinne, Oklahoma, United States, an unincorporated community * Corinne, Utah, United States, a town * Corinne, West Virginia, United States, ...

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 Katie is an English feminine name. It is a form Katherine, Kate, Caitlin, Kathleen, Katey and their related forms. It is frequently used on its own. People Sports * Katie Boulter (born 1996), British tennis player * Katie Clark (born 1994), B ...

was selected as the organization's Executive Director in February 2020, ten months after Warnshuis' resignation.

Bindu Jallabah Bindu ( sa, बिंदु) is a term meaning "point" or "dot". Bindu may also refer to: * Bindu (symbol) * Bindu, India, village in Darjeeling district of West Bengal India * Anusvara, a diacritical mark represented as a ''bindu'' or dot * ' ...

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 Brenda is a feminine given name in the English language. Origin The overall accepted origin for the female name Brenda is the Old Nordic male name ''Brandr'' meaning both ''torch'' and ''sword'': evidently the male name Brandr took root in areas ...

Janelle Jolley Janelle may refer to: * Janelle (given names) * Janelle (surnames) * 20673 Janelle, asteroid Fictional characters: * Janelle, a.k.a. Janae Timmins * Janelle Duco, in episode " From a Whisper to a Scream" of television series ''Grey's Anatomy'' ...

* Erynn Petersen * Kaya Thomas * Jeseekia Vaughn * Linnea Spampinato * Caity Campos *

Rebecca Sadwick Shaddix Rebecca, ; Syriac: , ) from the Hebrew (lit., 'connection'), from Semitic root , 'to tie, couple or join', 'to secure', or 'to snare') () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical ...

* Erkeda DeRouen *

Liliana Post Liliana is derived from the Latin word 'lilium' or 'lilion', both mean 'lily' in English. Due to this, the name means "pure" and "innocent". The name is generally found in North America, though it is more common in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese ...

Ellen Beardsley Ellen is a female given name, a diminutive of Elizabeth, Eleanor, Elena and Helen. Ellen was the 609th most popular name in the U.S. and the 17th in Sweden in 2004. People named Ellen include: * Ellen Adarna (born 1988), Filipino actress * El ...

Activities

Chapters

There are five chapters of GDI, located in

Chicago, IL (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Washington D.C.,

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 ...

New York, NY New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, 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 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, co ...

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 identified ...

, 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, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...

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

Camden Camden may refer to: People * Camden (surname), a surname of English origin * Camden Joy (born 1964), American writer * Camden Toy (born 1957), American actor Places Australia * Camden, New South Wales * Camden, Rosehill, a heritage res ...

, in Wilmington, and in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

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