I would suggest taking a look at the OpenStack diversity reports: https://superuser.openstack.org/articles/2018-gender-diversity-report/
"Newcomers who enter the community through a mentorship program boast a higher retention rate than other newcomers, at 13 percent versus less than 10 percent, respectively. In addition, these mentees contribute to the community for an average of 15 months, far longer than their three-month program duration. This report provides a springboard for additional research into mentorship programs, with the aim to identify and share best practices." One of the concerns raised was whether the ASF is "too big" for diversity efforts to have an impact. It was mentioned that there are 8,000 ASF contributors. OpenStack has 89,000 contributors. If they can improve their diversity numbers, I'm sure ASF member projects can as well. :) It will take several different programs and years of cultural change. Having mentorship programs like Outreachy will be vital towards understanding what changes need to be made. But to do nothing is to accept the status quo. (I'll also note that the Outreachy internships are 13 or 14 weeks long, not 6 weeks long.) Sage Sharp Outreachy Organizer On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 8:57 AM Naomi S <[email protected]> wrote: > for convenience, my thread is here: > > > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/dbba6f4fd358737fddcb3da4b78df4f87fe384d59a35469a0d131545@%3Cdev.diversity.apache.org%3E > > > On Mon, 24 Jun 2019 at 17:06, Myrle Krantz <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hey all, > > > > You already know this, but I ran some example numbers, and I figured > you'd > > appreciate them. > > > > We're too big to use Outreachy to significantly impact our diversity > > numbers. Just to take one dimension of one segment of our committer > > pipeline, and some simplified numbers as an example: if we have 8000 > > committers across all of our projects, and 5% are women, we'd need to add > > 444 women committers to raise the percentage of women committers to 10%. > > (8000*(.1 -.05)/(1 - .1)) > > > > If all of the Outreachy interns were women, and 90% of the Outreachy > > interns were to become project committers, we'd need to employ 494 > > Outreachy interns. > > > > Outreachy interns cost the org 6.5 thousand dollars, work for 6 weeks, > and > > require roughly 5 hours of mentoring per week. *So raising participation > > of women to 10% would cost more than 3.2 million dollars, and nearly 15 > > thousand mentor hours, if done solely via Outreachy.* > > > > Of course several of my assumptions are downright silly. So, it would > > likely cost much more. But even that amount is currently well beyond our > > reach. And the participation of minorities in our projects is probably > > worse than the participation of women, so continuing this calculation > along > > those dimensions is just going to get depressing. > > > > Direct impact on our diversity statistics can't be our goal in > > participating in Outreachy. > > > > Instead, one of the hopes that have been expressed with respect to > hosting > > an Outreachy intern is that we'll be able to follow their progress and > > learn from the problems they encounter (following the "Switch" model > (1)), > > so that we can figure out what's keeping people out of our communities > and > > tackle those underlying problems. > > > > Naomi's recent e-mail on this is super exciting. I am really looking > > forward to watching the work she's describing. > > > > Best Regards, > > Myrle > > > > 1.) > > > https://www.amazon.com/Switch-change-things-when-hard-ebook/dp/B005TKD512/ > > >
