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Outreachy Internships

Posted February 21, 2017

Outreachy, an internship program for people traditionally underrepresented in tech offers remote, three-month internships with a $5,500 stipend and a $500 conference travel stipend.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreachy

Interns work remotely with experienced mentors in free and open source software projects. The internships are often focused on programming tasks, but some projects offer internships in user experience design, graphic design, documentation, web development, marketing, translation, and more.

The Outreachy internships run from May 30 to August 30. More details and eligibility criteria can be found here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreachy#Program_Details

During the application period (February 16 to March 30), potential interns are expected to make contact with one or more of the open source project mentors, and make a contribution to the project. We find the strongest applicants contact mentors early, ask a lot of questions, and continually submit small contributions throughout the application period.

Program Details

Each participating organization, with the help of corporate sponsors, will sponsor several internships each from May 30, 2017 to August 30, 2017. The internships offered are not limited to coding, but include user experience design, graphic design, documentation, web development, marketing, translation and other types of tasks needed to sustain a FOSS project.

The internship is expected to be a full-time effort, meaning that the participants must be able to spend 40 hours a week on their project. Participants will work remotely from home. Because IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is one of the primary means of communication within FOSS projects, participants should be present on their project’s IRC channel while working. You will also be expected to communicate electronically with other project members via other means, including bug tracker comments, mailing list discussion, blog posts, and personal e-mail. Participants will be expected to blog at least once every two weeks about their work and their blog posts will be included on the sites that aggregate blog posts of organization contributors, usually called Planets, and on the Planet Outreach.

Both interns and mentors will need to sign the contracts with Software Freedom Conservancy. Software Freedom Conservancy will be administering the payments of the $5,500 (USD) stipends in three installments. In addition, $500 (USD) travel allowance will be available to the interns.

Eligibility

Eligible participants must meet all the following requirements:

  • (i) you are a resident or national of any country or region other than Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Sudan and identify as a woman (cis or trans), trans man, or genderqueer person (including genderfluid or genderfree) or (ii) you are a resident or national of the United States of any gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander

  • you are or will be 18 years of age or older by May 30, 2017

  • you have not previously participated in an Outreachy, Outreach Program for Women, or Google Summer of Code internship

  • you are available for a full-time, 40 hours a week internship, and you will not be in school full-time and will not have another full-time job for at least seven weeks between May 30, 2017 and August 30, 2017; being enrolled in school during a semester when you are taking more than half of the typical number of credits a full-time student takes or having an exams session is considered to be a full-time school commitment; Outreachy can be done to satisfy a project requirement and receive credits for it, in which case all other credits received during the semester should be no more than half of the typical number of credits a full-time student takes

  • you are eligible to work in the country or countries in which you will reside throughout the duration of the program

  • you are not a person or entity restricted by US export controls or sanctions programs

Because the program is intended to help newcomers and contributors who are relatively new to the FOSS community to get more involved, we unfortunately can’t accept past participants of Outreachy, Outreach Program for Women, or Google Summer of Code internships. However, if you qualify for Google Summer of Code, you are more than welcome to apply for it.

If you do not qualify for this round of the program for any reason, you are welcome to start working with mentors from the participating organizations in your spare time any time throughout the year to make your first contributions and gain experience with the relevant technologies and community practices. You can then apply for December 2017 to March 2018 Outreachy or for Google Summer of Code internships, or apply for internships or jobs with our sponsors, as works best for you.