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The Ada Initiative
We are a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture.
By now, most people in open technology and culture have noticed the scarcity of women in their communities, and want to change that. They just don’t know how. That’s where we come in. Our strategy for change is simple: Give concrete, straight-forward advice to willing and eager audiences.
Find out more about us and what we do.
AdaCamp DC, July 2012
AdaCamp is a Ada Initiative event focused on increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture. The next AdaCamp will be AdaCamp DC, a 150 person unconference in Washington, D.C. on July 10-11, 2012.Support the Ada Initiative
Bronze sponsors
- Ceph Distributed open source file system
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Support the Ada Initiative
A personal appeal for support from Valerie Aurora, executive director of the Ada Initiative
Cross-posted from Geek Feminism
I’m writing to ask you to donate to the Ada Initiative.
A year ago, a friend of mine was groped at an open source conference. Again. I’ve personally been groped twice at conferences myself.
But what shocked me most was the reaction to her blog post about it. Hundreds of people made comments like, “Women should expect to get groped at conferences,” and “It was her fault.” Many of these people were members of the open source community. Some were even prominent leaders – that I was forced to work with directly in my job as a Linux kernel developer! I realized I’d felt alienated, unwelcome, and unsafe as a woman in open source for many years. I was furious and determined to make a difference.
So I quit my job and co-founded the Ada Initiative with Mary Gardiner. We are the only non-profit dedicated solely to increasing the participation of women in open source, Wikipedia, fan culture, and other areas of open technology and culture. Currently, women make up only 2% of the open source community, and 9% of Wikipedia editors, down from 13% a year ago. We want to change these trends.
You can help by donating or by spreading the word about our donation drive now:
Help spread the word
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished already. Since our founding in early 2011, we helped over 30 conferences and organizations adopt an anti-harassment policy, organized the first AdaCamp unconference, provided free consulting on high-profile sexist incidents, wrote and taught two workshops on supporting women in open tech/culture, and ran two surveys, among other things.
http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/
We need your help to achieve our upcoming goals. The Ada Initiative is funded entirely by donations. Without your financial support, the Ada Initiative will have to shut down in early 2012.
http://supportada.org/donate
Your donations will fund upcoming projects like: Ada’s Advice, a comprehensive guide to resources for helping women in open tech/culture, Ada’s Careers, a career development community, and First Patch Week, where we help women create and submit their first open source patch. You can learn more about how the Ada Initiative is organized and operated on our web site and blog.
Whether or not you can donate yourself, you can help us by spreading the word about our fundraising drive. Please tell your friends about our important work. Email, blog, add our donation button to your web site, and tweet. You don’t have to stand on the sidelines any longer. You can help women in open technology and culture, starting today.