Django Girls Foundation is an initiative that aims to introduce women and girls who never coded before to the world of technology and increase the diversity of the tech industry. We achieve this by organising one-day workshops and inviting women to come and learn how to build the internet using HTML, CSS, Python and Django. Django Girls is a volunteer run organisation with volunteers all over the world. Django Girls has two part-time paid staff members and the support team (six awesome ladies who are also volunteers) to help provide support to all other volunteers.
This Impact Report aims to celebrate achievements of the Django Girls community in the past two years, and showcase the incredible growth of the organization. For the first time ever, we're also presenting results of a survey we conducted with almost 600 past Django Girls attendees to see if Django Girls Foundation actually achieves the goal of our mission: to bring more women into tech industry!
👭👫👬 Django Girls community grew to 1069 volunteers who have organised 377 free workshops with 102 more being currently planned. That's more than 3000 hours of happy coding!
👩💻 21% of participants in our survey started working in tech after attending Django Girls workshop. 👉
💯 In the last 2 years we improved our tools to support the growth of the organisation, maintended our free online resources (our tutorial is now in 14 languages!), started Django Girls Store as a fundraising effort, shipped 146 organizer kits and more. 👉
📈🎉 In July 2017, on our 3rd birthday, we also celebrated our 10,000th workshop attendee 👉
🎓 We learned that 79% of Django Girls alumnis are still learning programming after the workshop. 👉
📚 693,524 people used our free online tutorial in the last year
2014-2015 | 2015-2016 | 2016-2017 | |
Number of Django Girls workshops | 51 | 122 | 188 |
Number of participants | 1681 | 4129 | ~4373* |
Number of cities | 42 | 102 | 163 |
Number of new cities | - | 79 | 108 |
Number of countries | 26 | 48 | 54 |
Number of new countries | - | 28 | 13 |
Unique users reading our Tutorial | 73,392 | 313,064 | 693,524 |
The curriculum we developed Django Girls Tutorial is used in our workshops to introduce attendees to web development using Python and Django. The tutorial has been published online for free to allow everyone to learn without the need to attend an in-person workshop.
We are proud that the tutorial has been now translated into 14 languages We are thankful to all the volunteers who have made this possible.
The popularity of the online tutorial keeps growing significantly faster than our in-person workshops. In the second year it gained a 328.95% increase in the number of unique users who used the tutorial, and 121.53% increase in the last year. Since the tutorial as been published, it's been read by 1,068,995 of people!
We realised that there are certain things such as room decorations and swag (stickers, buttons and tattoos) that are needed by all event organisers. We lowered the costs of decorations and swag for each event by ordering them in bulk from suppliers and stock them in the Django Girls shop. Organisers then order the Organizer Starter Kit from our shop for a small donation, and we donated a number of them to events organised in developing countries. We are super excited that we managed to introduce the Django Girls Starter Kit in 2016.
Since the introduction, 146 events have received their starter kits which has helped them make their events awesome! Out of those, 28 were donated for free for events in need.
Most of our funds were generated through corporate and individual donations through Patreon, an online donation management system. In 2016, we also managed to introduce Django Girls shop where we sell swag such as t-shirts, socks and tote bags as a way of making the charity sustainable. Details of how much was raised in 2016 are shown in the table below:
Activity | Montant | Notes |
Patreon donations | $12,546.71 | Patreon donation have been steadly decreasing in the last months |
Boutique de Django Girls | £7,258.00 | |
Kits de démarrage pour organisateurs | £701.80 |
We have celebrated reaching our milestone of 10,000 workshop participants by conducting a survey to see how Django Girls alumni are doing after attending the workshop in their city. We reached out to our former attendees and received an overwhelming response from 519 awesome women who shared with us their experiences with Django Girls and how attending the workshop changed their lives.
The ages of the respondents ranged from 14 to 65 years, with 71% being under the age of 30. This shows that Django Girls workshops are open and welcoming to women and girls irrespective of their age, as long they have an interest in technology and learning programming
We'd like to acknowledge that even though the total number of responses received is a significant representative sample of the Django Girls alumni, it is likely that most of the women who responded to our survey stayed active in the tech industry after attending our workshops and hence the results could be positively skewed.
We asked the respondents if they were involved in tech-related activities after the workshop. The tech activities included attending tech events, organising Django Girls and similar tech events, coaching at Django Girls workshops, teaching or working in tech, working on coding projects and enrolling for programming courses.
We were excited to learn that 73% of the respondents are still involved tech-related activities after the event.
These statistics show that our workshops are generating interest in technology and programming in the participants who attends them. This interest then results in them organising other workshops and tech events as well as attending tech events for some of the women. These findings prove that Django Girls workshops have been a successful intervention to increase the number of women involved in engineering and programming.
We were also interested in finding out whether our former participants continued learning programming after attending the workshop.
79% of women attending Django Girls workshop continued learning programming after and 7% were planning to continue learning
1% of participants had tried and given up while 13% had not continued learning programming after the workshop.
The findings showed that the majority of the women who attend Django Girls workshops continue learning to code after. The women continued learning in various ways; some on their own, enrolling for online coding courses or enrolling into universities. These findings show that Django Girls is indeed increasing the number of women in the programming field, who will one day be employed as programmers after they have developed their programming skills.
The biggest question we were interested to answer was to know how many of the women started working in tech as developers after attending the workshop.
We were impressed to learn that 21% of Django Girls' former attendees are now hired as developers after attending the workshop!
It was also interesting to note that 15% of the attendees of were already working in tech and hence their newly acquired skills made their jobs better. About 23% had not yet got jobs as developers but were still developing their skills so they could get jobs in the future while the remaining 40% had not got tech jobs and did not indicate their future plans.
This further affirmed that our work has had positive results in the lives of women we introduced to coding as well as the tech industry that hires these women. We are proud that at least 109 women now work as developers after attending the workshop. This is a big achievement which we are happy about!
We were also interested in learning other ways the participants had been impacted by attending a Django Girls workshop.
The survey showed that 93% of the participants had been impacted positively in different ways.
The survey showed that about 43% had been inspired by meeting other women in tech resulting in them becoming more involved in tech by organising tech events and attending other tech events. Many of these women were so inspired to learn that the tech industry and programming are for women as well.
About 25% had been excited that learnt new knowledge about technology, programming and web development; gained experienced and experienced personal growth. About 14% of the participants had been happy to have been able to meet new friends and new connections within the tech industry whom they have kept in touch with since the workshop. About 11% of the participants had changed their career path and became interested in a career in the tech industry prompting them to continue learning to code so they could one day become developers. Only 7% said there was no remarkable impact on their lives due to participation in the workshop.
The findings show that Django Girls has been successful in inspiring women to fall in love with programming as participants are exposed to women who are in the programming discipline within their own communities. The friendly environment that Django Girls workshops provide enables women who have never programmed before to learn to code and thereby arousing interest in tech and causing many of these women to work towards a career change and aim to be employed in the tech industry. The friendly environment also creates an atmosphere for making new friends and creating new network connections, fostering the beauty of the Django community which strives to be welcoming and diverse.
On our third birthday, we asked our Twitter community to tell us about the ways Django Girls impacted their lives. The response we received was overwhelmingly positive:
#IAmADjangoGirl Thanks to Django Girls, I carved out a whole new career & life for myself, and met some amazing people along the way! 🎉🎉
— Jen (@OuiDoll) July 21, 2017
HBDay to #DjangoGirls ! Its been an amazing journey with folks here in Korea.6 workshops already held and 1 more on the way #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/qMy4Xn4vfu
— Hassan Abid (하산) (@hassanabidpk) July 21, 2017
🎉 Y'all!! I used to be an awesome English teacher but now, because of @djangogirls, I'm an awesome django developer. #IAmADjangoGirl ❤ pic.twitter.com/3C15jLGFeg
— Rachell (@Rachell_Calhoun) July 21, 2017
From trainee @ home, coach two times and organizer once. I can tell you that @djangogirls changed my life in many good ways #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/MbUuN5bc0R
— Jessica Temporal (@jesstemporal) July 21, 2017
Thanks to @djangogirls I became more self-confident and learned that you don't need super powers to change the world #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/5xVJ58TwEH
— Ola Sendecka (@asendecka) July 21, 2017
Happy 3rd birthday to @djangogirls! I feel amazingly lucky to have been a part of @DjangoGirlsPDX for the past 2 years. 🙌💕 #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/g4512ebKgl
— Terian 💀💾🌸 (@spine_cone) July 21, 2017
🎂 3 years ago I attended @djangogirls and it was the kickstart of my new awesome life as a programmer + many other things 🎈 #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/6GIcYq0ftP
— Dori Czapari (@doriczapari) July 21, 2017
#IAmADjangoGirl Thanks to djangogirls I participated in some beautiful workshops and I met new friends. pic.twitter.com/h4oEFCGbKz
— Fiorella de luca (@fiorella_deluca) July 21, 2017
The decision 2 organize d 1st @DjangoGirlsLAG was 1 of the best I ever made. I am grateful 4 d experience HBD @djangogirls #IAmADjangoGirl
— Aisha Bello #PyConNG (@AishaXBello) July 21, 2017
Thank you@AishaXBello @DjangoGirlsLAG @djangogirls. Because of y'all, programming became my thing #IAmADjangoGirl
— Hamdalah (@GeekHijabi) July 21, 2017
Organising & coaching with @djangogirls has brought so many amazing opportunities and wonderful people into my life! #IAmADjangoGirl 🎂🎈💙💜🦋
— Helen ST 🚲💚 (@helenst) July 21, 2017
Three years ago I attended the @djangogirls workshop and now I'm working as Python dev. I've learnt so much thanks to you! #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/vKbfczTZ6X
— Agatku (@AgataGrdal) July 21, 2017
Attending Django Girls Ota changed my mind of Women in STEM. Now I do all I can to encourage more Women/Girls into STEM. #Iamadjangogirl pic.twitter.com/qJc3lzCKiw
— Ada Lilian Oragudosi (@Oragudosi_Ada) July 21, 2017
#IAmADjangoGirl. I started contributing to organize Django Girls events in Italy in 2015 and I'm proud I met so many passionate women! pic.twitter.com/sPrHSqPXrc
— Laura Bartoli (@LauraCelesteBar) July 21, 2017
Django Girls helped me out to go back to the time when I used to code as a hobby ❤ #IAmADjangoGirl #Happybday pic.twitter.com/lfrpcUYESq
— Paula Côrte Real (@paulacortereal) July 21, 2017
I organized two @djangogirls Brazil and it was amazing to see the smiles and lives that changed! Happy B-day! #IAmADjangoGirl
— Leticia Portella (@leleportella) July 21, 2017
Happy birthday @djangogirls 1st attended @DjangoGirlsPyUK then organised two @DjangoGirlsMcr organising third & more to come #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/agwL42er1a
— le (@lwyso) July 21, 2017
Thank you @djangogirls for giving me the confidence to become a developer and to run workshops to help others do the same! #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/ALL3beAIK4
— 🥞Päivi ✨ (@peconias) July 21, 2017
@djangogirls taught me a lot of being confident and awesome :). Happy birthday ^^ #IAmADjangoGirl pic.twitter.com/smm5Nwwqb7
— Aina Anjary Fenomamy (@anjania_catus) July 21, 2017
Encore une fois, nous tenons à remercier les incroyables sponsors de Django Girls et des ateliers individuels Django Girls partout dans le monde. Ils nous aident à rendre les Django Girls durables et, plus important encore, ils aident les organisateurs locaux à maintenir la gratuité de leurs événements. Nous voulons que Django Girls soit accessible au plus grand nombre, et cela ne pourrait pas arriver sans eux.
Connu pour Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats et Logstash, Elastic crée des produits pour rechercher, analyser et visualiser vos données, vous permettant d'obtenir des informations exploitables en temps réel. Avant de devenir l'un de nos plus gros sponsors, ils ont également sponsorisé plusieurs événements locaux. Merci <3
La Django Software Foundation (DSF) est une organisation à but non lucratif créée pour promouvoir, soutenir et faire progresser le développement de Django. Ils ont aidé de nombreux événements Django Girls qui avaient du mal à trouver des sponsors locaux. Merci <3
La Python Software Foundation (PSF) est une organisation à but non lucratif qui détient les droits de propriété intellectuelle sur le langage de programmation Python. Ils sont l'un des plus grands sponsors des événements locaux. Merci <3
GitHub est un service d'hébergement de gestionnaire de version Git. Ils ont sponsorisé de nombreux événements Django Girls et fournissent du matériel utile aux nouveaux apprenants, comme des aide-mémoire. Merci <3
Divio, qui a créé Django CMS et Aldryn, utilise Python et Django pour prendre en charge l'installation, la maintenance, le dépannage et le développement de sites Web. Ils ont sponsorisé de nombreux événements locaux et ont rejoint Patreon en juin 2015. Merci <3
Lincoln Loop est un studio Web à service complet offrant une expérience utilisateur et un développement basés sur le framework Web Django. Ils ont rejoint notre campagne Patreon en avril 2015 et ont contribué à des événements locaux. Merci <3
Since May, Django Girls has been hosted on PythonAnywhere! They host, run, and code Python in the cloud, and have made the lives of our attendees much easier by being really simple and pleasant to use. Thanks <3
Mandrill is a transactional email platform from MailChimp. They'vebeen supporting our emails since September 2015 and have also sponsored local events. Thanks <3
We would also like to thank our regular donors from Patreon: your commitment to help us every month is amazing. Thanks <3