This is a submission for the WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience
I didn't participate in SheCoded the past couple of years, but I want to participate this year because it's important and... reasons. 😣
Last year I've posted about the global diversity in tech organisations that shut down last year (Women Who Code and Girls In Tech), and it's not getting any easier this year.
With so many people responding to me publicly and privately on how they can support Coding Grace (a small Irish non-profit), I wrote another LinkedIn post to thank everyone and suggested ways to help us.
First it was Women Who Code and now Girls in Tech | Vicky Twomey-Lee
🫨 The news of the recent closures of global organisations like #WomenWhoCode and #GirlsInTech have sent shockwaves through tech communities worldwide, and it had made me wonder about Coding Grace, a small not-for-profit Irish volunteer-led organisation. How would Coding Grace survive in such a difficult environment. We run a lean organisation but there is lean, and then there is impossible. After the last post I made in the aftermath of Girls in Tech news, I got many supportive replies from various people. It has taken me some time to get back to everyone who has reached out about supporting Coding Grace, and asked what are our needs? https://lnkd.in/eycQ8PAd 🙏 First and foremost, thank you to everyone who contacted me privately and publicly. It was so heart-warming to see the community being there especially when things are rough right now across the board. 🧐 What are our needs? We had a recent team meeting to talk and sound out ideas about this. In terms of finance, the base needs are expenses which includes accountant fees (our biggest cost), and bank fees. In terms of people, there are two sources of help we are looking for: - People who might be interested in joining us as a committee member, to have fresh ideas on what we can do and help the community with - Volunteers to help with social media, find fab speakers, newsletter, events, conferences, etc.; we can set up a subcommittee so it doesn’t fall on one person Not only will we be grateful for your time helping us - you’ll also get full credit for your efforts to make Coding Grace better in our public comms. And if time isn't on your side, you can still support us through monetary donations to our Open Collective. You will be acknowledged in our newsletter if you are a regular contributor. https://lnkd.in/eTKPgiEr TL;DR You can help us by volunteering and/or monetary donations. Thank you so much for your time reading this. If you have further questions, drop me an email and I am also happy to jump on a call or meet you over tea/coffee: [email protected] #IrishTechCommunity #DiversityInTech #Community #GettingInvolved #ThursdayThoughts
linkedin.com
But then a couple of months later, Ada Lovelace Day (non-profit based in UK who also supported events around the world) announced their closure! 😢
Ada Lovelace Day | LinkedIn | Vicky Twomey-Lee
💔This is heartbreaking to hear about Ada Lovelace Day's closure. 🙏This is important for me to say, I want to personally thank 🐋Thomas Shaw 🐋and ShipItCon,…
linkedin.com
It's heartbreaking that all organisations have the support of the community and yet multi-many-$$$€€€ companies haven't supported via donations, or in recent cases from those that did... pulled funding altogether.
Case in point, here's another recent newsletter (March 2025) I received that is asking for help to raise funds, another org called Reinvented. I discovered them via a friend who bought their physical STEM magazine (it was a maker edition). I've support it on and off, e.g. buying magazines, and donated to their launching women in stem minifigs to space event.
The thing is, the newsletter was Reinvented organisation asking to help fundraise $40k so they can continue activities like hands-on STEM activities and publications of the physical magazines, and admin costs through the rest of 2025. This is due to their major sponsors pulling funds! 😢
Read Reinvent's Newsletter
So... what can we do?
How do we keep enabling opportunities for under-represented communities of all ages to explore STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Art, Maths)?
If you can, support the organisations that are still there by:-
- Sharing their initiatives, call to actions, call for participations, donating directly, sponsoring initiatives, etc. (If you can think of more, share in comments below.)
- Attending and/or getting involved with activities and events.
- Connecting people from your network, or seeking out folks to help connect people to expand your/their network
We are not alone even though we think we are isolated. Don't silo ourselves, collaborate with others.
Being part of the grassroots tech community here in Ireland, we (volunteer event organisers) are always trying to find ways to improve our tools.
Here's an example for organisers running events on zero/tight budget... finding alternatives to meetup.com (not a great tool, and very expensive for zero-budget community events). I'm involved trying out Mobilizon (e.g. creating account, added groups, events, etc), while others are working on the admin and setting up the backend. But they are open to local community organisers to try it out.
Davey: "Hey folks, we've set up a test instance of Mobili…" - mastodon.ie
Hey folks, we've set up a test instance of Mobilizon to see what people think of it. Have a go and see if it makes sense. I did make a quick intro to it in a video here: https://vimeo.com/1063862661/b62e20280c?share=copy Quirk for inviting members: they need to be on Mobilizon already, in this case the server is not federated with anything, so they will need to be signed up on the same server. Do you put on events and do you think this is worth trying? https://events.daoine.eu/ #mastodaoine @[email protected]
mastodon.ie
It's by the same folks who set up the Irish Mastodon instance called mastodon.ie and you can find out all about them and also support by donating to their Open Collective: https://mastodon.ie/about
If you want to find out more what the Irish community are up to, check out #mastodaoine -- "daoine" means "people" in Irish.
One personal example: I am helping with organising Django Girls Dublin Workshop that will be held at the upcoming DjangoCon Europe. It's DjangoCon Europe's first time to Dublin, and I'm super excited to run the free workshop again with new faces from areas locally and afar internationally. And I'm also involved in their Code of Conduct team, but first time working with their organisers and community. So helping where I can as Dub's my local stomping ground. 😎
Another personal example: I'm involved with Financial Aid and Code of Conduct teams for EuroPython, and I won't be there in-person, it will be in Prague this year. It's a great way to for me to help, share my past knowledge, improve processes, and meet new people.
And in all these communities, you find everyone trying their best to be inclusive as possible, and with continuous improvements to make it accessible and sustainable.
There's going to be many challenges, and this is not a happy post, but step-by-step, shoulder-to-shoulder, we can inch our way past uncertainties, find novel ways to support each other and keep opportunities open for under-represented and underserved communities.
On a side note, I'm porting diversityintech.fyi which was written in 11ty to Django. (I know!!! I'm actually coding again! 🫢😜)
Previously I actually ported it to 11ty as a covid project from Django. 🙃
After a few years, I am very over the static generated site, and maintaining all those YAML files; I just want to have a nice default admin panel and add stuff. No muss or fuss.
And no, I haven't logged my dev from porting it back to Django, it's not very interesting, but it's nice to code in-between all my volunteering initiatives.
