Community

R Foundation taskforce on women and other under-represented groups.

Forwards partners with community groups within and beyond the R community to work towards more inclusive tech and open source/research software communities.

The R community groups with a particular mission to support members of underrepresented groups include:

• R-Ladies: the mission of R-Ladies is to achieve proportionate representation by encouraging, inspiring, and empowering people of genders currently underrepresented in the R community.
• AfricaR: working to achieve improved representation by encouraging, inspiring, and empowering the African population of all genders who are underrepresented in the global R community.
• MiR: MiR Community hopes to provide a space of belonging and support for people who identify as underrepresented minority R useRs. They aim to provide opportunities for underrepresented minority useRs to contribute to the R community.
• Blind R User Group: a mailing list for anyone interested in knowing more about (or improving) the use of R by blind people. This would include blind students, their support staff, or anyone having an interest in how blind people will make use of R and related tools.
• Rainbow R (R LGBTQ+): a community that supports, promotes and connects LGBTQ+ people who code in the R language.

In addition, there are many general R User Groups open to all, some of which are listed in the following places:

• R Community Explorer a dashboard that tracks meetups listed on Meetup.com.
• R User Group List maintained on GitHub by the R consultancy Jumping Rivers. Others may be found by searching on Meetup or Facebook.

Forwards is a taskforce set up by the R Foundation, the not-for-profit organization that supports the R project. Other organizations we work with include:

• R Consortium a not-for-profit consortium of business set up to support the worldwide community of users, maintainers and developers of R software.
  • The R Consortium has a Diversity & Inclusion Working Group.
• Why R? Foundation a non-governmental organization set up by a team of R enthusiasts coming from both business and academia who aim to support local R communities around the world.