Grant date: October 2021
Amount: $150,000

Outreachy is one of the Software Freedom Conservancy’s member projects. It provides internships to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developers. Anyone who faces under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technology industry of their country is invited to apply. Outreachy internships are open to applicants around the world. Interns work remotely and are paid a stipend of $6,000 USD for the three month internship. Outreachy expressly invites women (both cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people to apply, as well as other under-represented communities.

With this grant, Outreachy will:

• Continue to provide over 50 internships twice a year and strive to increase internships to 60-80 internships per round.
• Provide explicit funding opportunities to projects working on humanitarian projects.
• Strengthen operations to bring resiliency and sustainability to the program.
• Communicate with relevant target populations so as to more effectively spread the word about the program and also develop strategic partnerships to further amplify its impact.

Update

With this grant, Outreachy was able to surpass their initial goals:

• They increased from offering about 100 internships to supporting 125 internships.
• Many graduates of the Outreachy program have gone on to become leaders and mentors in FOSS. For example, Asal Mirzaieva, an Outreachy alumnus, went on to teach programming to refugee women at the ReDI school in Munich, Germany.
• The percentage of interns that successfully completed their internship was above 92%.

In November 2019, Outreachy conducted a longitudinal study to understand if they were effective at retaining past interns in free software and STEM fields. The findings were extremely encouraging – of alums who were employed, 94% are employed in the technology industry. 34% of Outreachy alumnus were employed by an Outreachy sponsor after their internship.

ARDC funds supported stipends for students as well as hiring staff and contractors. Expanding staffing enabled them to increase their reach while still providing interns with high-quality support.

Learn more at: https://www.outreachy.org/.