Every year, hundreds of thousands of children enter the foster care system, navigating one of the most vulnerable periods of their lives. Behind the scenes, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) volunteers work tirelessly to ensure these children have a voice in court proceedings that will shape their futures.
The CASA Mission
The CASA organizations connect trained volunteer advocates with children in the foster care system. These volunteers document case interactions, generate crucial court reports, and track emancipation checklists for youth aging out of the system. It's detailed, meaningful work that requires careful documentation and coordination across multiple stakeholders.
Ruby for Good: Where Technology Meets Purpose
This is where Ruby for Good steps in. This volunteer-driven initiative connects developers with organizations like CASA, creating technology solutions that serve the greater good. In this case, the result is a multi-tenant codebase that currently serves multiple active CASA organizations, with the potential to scale across court systems nationwide.
The developer community structure is particularly interesting. About 80% of volunteers are early-career developers seeking real-world experience, portfolio pieces, and networking opportunities. The remaining 15-20% are senior developers who want to teach and solve problems outside their day-job constraints. This creates a natural mentorship environment where experienced developers guide newcomers through meaningful contributions.
Building Skills While Building Solutions
The technical implementation showcases best practices that benefit both the CASA organizations and the volunteer developers. The project runs on Heroku with a solid QA process, staging environment, and regular deploys. The platform handles complex requirements like multi-user systems with appropriate data access controls, document templating for court reports, and PDF generation.
One of the most valuable aspects of the project is how it creates learning opportunities. This is where Scout Monitoring comes in, as it helps identify performance issues like N+1 queries and slow pages, which become educational GitHub issues for junior developers to tackle. The philosophy is simple: "If it's safe in prod, merge it and clean up later," prioritizing learning and contribution over perfection.
The results speak for themselves. One project lead’s company has directly hired 4-5 engineers through Ruby for Good connections, demonstrating how volunteer work can translate into career opportunities while serving a greater purpose.
Supporting Open Source Impact
At Scout, we believe in supporting projects that make a real difference. When developers contribute to initiatives like Ruby for Good, they're not just building their skills; they're creating tools that help vulnerable children navigate the justice system more effectively.
The CASA project exemplifies what's possible when the developer community comes together around a shared mission. By providing monitoring tools that help identify and resolve performance issues, we can support both the technical growth of volunteer developers and the smooth operation of platforms serving those who need it most.
Ruby for Good has also benefited from Heroku’s open source credits. This type of support ensures that the project can operate with minimal financial liabilities. This lets the organizers focus on building quality products as opposed to worrying about funding.
Getting Involved
If you're interested in contributing to Ruby for Good, their GitHub repository includes a Slack join link in the readme: https://github.com/rubyforgood/casa. They welcome volunteers across all disciplines—not just engineers, but also PMs, designers, and product people.
The primary need right now is helping more CASA organizations join the platform, which is currently free and always will be. Every new organization means more children with advocates who have better tools to document their cases and present their needs to the court system.
When technology serves justice, everyone wins: the volunteers who build their skills, the advocates who can focus on what matters most, and ultimately, the children whose voices are heard more clearly in the systems designed to protect them.
Scout Monitoring is proud to support open source projects that make a difference with free access. Learn more about our monitoring tools and how they help developers build better software at scoutapm.com.
