Girl Develop It
American educational charity
Girl Develop It (GDI) is a nonprofit organization devoted to providing women materials needed to pursue careers in software development. Founded in 2010 in New York City, 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 and Canada, in 2026, GDI maintains active community chapters exclusively in the United States.
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 New York City. GDI started with a single class that sold out in one day. In 2017, the organization reported chapters in 53 cities in 33 states and districts in the United States 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 United States and none in other countries.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28842901. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2026, 2018 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Girl Develop It” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.