Twice a year, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities work with Outreachy organizers to offer internships. The goal of Outreachy is to support people from groups underrepresented in tech. Interns work remotely with mentors from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities on projects ranging from programming, user experience, documentation, illustration and graphical design, to data science. A coordinator for each participating FOSS community works with Outreachy organizers to track mentors, find funding, and advertise their internship projects.
Outreachy interns come from a wide range of backgrounds. Outreachy is open to applicants over 18 who fit our eligibility rules. Interns could be university students, code school graduates, people switching careers, or people coming back to tech after starting a family or another long absence. Most Outreachy interns already have some exposure to using FOSS and technical knowledge, but many of them have not contributed to FOSS communities before.
During our four-week contribution period, potential interns make contributions to the participating FOSS communities. This allows mentors to accurately evaluate their skills. Mentors work remotely with interns for three months.
Urvika Gola, former Outreachy intern, hacks on the open source Android application, Lumicall, with former Google Summer of Code intern, Pranav Jain. (Photo CC-BY Sage Sharp.)
There are two Outreachy rounds (May to August, and December to March). The timeline for mentoring orgs looks like:
| Mid-year round | End of year round | ||
| Pre-application period | Late January, early February | Late August, early September | Outreachy organizers reach out to open source communities to see if they want to participate in the next round. Participating communities find funding and submit their community for approval by the Outreachy organizers. Some communities may be added during the application period, but we like to ensure that new communities have at least 3 weeks of the application period to evaluate potential interns. |
| Application period | mid-February to end of March | early September to mid-October | Outreachy applicants select projects they're interested in, and make small contributions to those projects. We find that the strongest applicants make multiple small contributions consistently throughout the application process. Having a list of starter tasks is essential to finding the right candidates. We will also have a Twitter chat with the #OutreachyChat hashtag to introduce mentors. |
| Intern selection | mid April | end of October | Participating communities go through the applications in the Outreachy application system, and select the applicants they want to accept as interns. If they have strong applicants that they don't have funding to select, they can ask the Outreachy organizers to provide additional internship funding from the Outreachy general fund. Outreachy organizers will also work with existing sponsors to try to find additional funds. If this is the May to August round, Outreachy will collaborate with any projects that are participating in Google Summer of Code to coordinate intern selection. Once all interns are selected for all projects and funding sources are confirmed, the Outreachy organizers will announce the selected interns. Applicants will confirm via email they want to participate in the internship. |
| Internships Start | end of May | beginning of December | Mentors officially begin guiding their interns on the project work.. |
| Mid-term Review | mid July | mid January | Mentors provide mid-internship feedback to Outreachy organizers and indicate whether interns should be paid the mid-term payment. |
| Final Review | end of August | beginning of March | Mentors provide final internship feedback to Outreachy organizers and indicate whether interns should be paid the final payment. |
| Internships End | end of August | beginning of March | Mentors should encourage and support interns in continuing their community participation through volunteer or paid opportunities, as suits the nature of the community and the interests of the intern. |
Outreachy applicant. During the four-week application phase, Outreachy applicants make a small contribution to 1-2 projects and then submit an application to be an intern for the project. Only applicants that complete a contribution will be considered to be accepted to be an Outreachy intern. Full statistics on how many people apply, where they apply from, and how many applicants make a contribution can be found on our latest blog post.
Outreachy intern. Outreachy interns work for three months on a project with one or more mentors. Outreachy interns are not just students (unlike Google Summer of Code), but can be anyone over 18 who meets our eligibility requirements.
Outreachy organizers. Outreachy is run by a small group of organizers, who handle invoicing sponsors, intern payments and travel stipend requests, answer questions from applicants, and onboard new community coordinators, mentors, and volunteers
FOSS community coordinator. Outreachy internships are organized into projects under a specific FOSS community. Each community has a coordinator, which is the main point of contact between the Outreachy organizers and the community's mentors and volunteers. A community cannot participate in Outreachy without a coordinator, and each Outreachy mentored project must be associated with a community.
If you are interested in being a FOSS community coordinator and are willing to accept the above duties, you can apply for your community to participate in Outreachy.
Outreachy mentors. Each Outreachy intern works on a three month project with one or more mentors. Prospective interns (applicants) work with mentors to complete small contributions to the project during the four-week contribution period. Mentors duties are outlined in detail on the mentor FAQ page. Here is an overview of mentor duties
If you are comfortable with the above duties, then review the Outreachy mentorship process.
Outreachy volunteers. Each participating Outreachy community needs volunteers to answer applicants questions during the application process. Volunteers should be contributors to the community they help with. Volunteer duties are varied (check with your coordinator for where they need help). Volunteer duties may include:
If you are comfortable with the above duties, then sign up on the Outreachy community call for participation page. The volunteer sign up flow is still WIP, but you can figure out who is the coordinator for your community and contact them for details on how you can help out.
