For this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD), we’re shining the limelight with two exemplary servers from the Discord Admin Community who volunteered to be a part of this year’s IWD celebrations. These two communities are women-owned and make an effort to uplift others who are looking to connect and learn about what interests them the most and push each other forward in areas that are traditionally more male-dominated.
Read on to learn how these Discord communities specialize in two unique use cases of learning: to prepare for your future and to prepare for a good ol’ dungeon crawl.
ApplyingToCollege
When you’re advancing through the semesters of your educational journey, it can be daunting to try and get into the colleges and universities you have your eye on.
ApplyingToCollege is a women-owned, Partnered Discord community that’s affiliated with the r/ApplyingToCollege subreddit. It’s an active space where you can meet your potential future classmates who are at the same stage of the application process as you, or ask questions and talk to the alumni that have gone through it all. If you’re accepted to the university you’ve dreamed of, there’s even the “College Megaforum” for anyone that’s celebrating their acceptance like you, letting you get a head start on meeting your future best friends.
“A lot of information about [the college admissions] process can be very confusing or even paywalled,” explains the server owner for ApplyingToCollege. “As a woman leading this community, I love to encourage other women throughout the process. We get women in our community who are interested in STEM, which is a male-dominated field. It’s cool to see how supportive everyone is of each other!”
ApplyingToCollege is a prime example of what makes Discord special: it helps people around the world create and foster spaces where you never feel like you’re alone in the world, no matter what corner of the Earth you reside. When you feel like you’re by yourself when looking for the perfect college to shape the rest of your life, the ApplyingToCollege community —and every community member and leader inside — will be there alongside you.
Alongside coming together around a shared interest, one important aspect of creating community is not just making sure everyone feels like they belong, but making sure they feel safe coming out of their shell. (Our Moderator Academy is a great place to learn how.)
For women interested in tabletop gaming, Dungeons and Darlings cover everything you could ever need: character discussion, world-building, and writing workshops to expand your lore, and even support for when you’re going the extra mile and building your own tabletop RPG system.
Server owner Rorry expands upon it: “Our server is a safe haven for women/female aligned individuals in the DnD/TTRPG space. We offer a place for these individuals to find groups to play with, discuss all things TTRPG, brainstorm ideas, and learn how to play in a low-pressure environment.”
“With our community being made up of women/female-aligned individuals, we make every day International Women's Day by celebrating the amazing things that women bring to the table (both literally and metaphorically). We’re blessed with hearing stories from several server members about how they were too intimidated to learn how to play TTRPGs before they joined, but because the community is so welcoming, they took a leap and found a group to play with.”
Bringing your friends around the table for a night of adventuring and dungeon-crawling can be intimidating if you don’t know where to begin. For women trying to explore a traditionally male-dominated hobby, it can be almost discouraging to not see fellow women in these spaces. Thanks to the girls-only Dungeons and Darlings community, looking for someone that they can both learn from and can relate to on a personal level is as easy as @mentioning a friend.
Empowering Women On and Within Discord
Of course, it’s not a celebration of building a place of belonging without a good ol’ Discordian celebration! In honor of International Women’s Day, Discord’s Women in Tech Employee Resource Group is planning to help pilot an app-building workshop, designed to help women of Discord create fun and novel apps to customize their communities and make their spaces on Discord unique.
It’s a yearly celebration around these parts — if you’d like to join our team to shape a place of belonging for everyone in the world, consider taking a peek at our job board! Looking to improve your current community to make it a welcoming place? Learn the best moderation practices at the Discord Moderator Academy.
