OPW Proposal for the oVirt Board

[Brian Proffitt]

Background
 
Outreach Program for Women (OPW) - http://gnome.org/opw/ - has been organized by the GNOME Foundation since 2010. It offers remote, mentored, paid internships to women with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects twice a year. The last round of internships had 40 interns with 16 FOSS organizations sponsored by 20 organizations and companies. Linux kernel, OpenStack, Wikimedia, and Mozilla are some of the organizations that offer internships as part of the program. Red Hat, Google, Intel, HP, and the Linux Foundation are some of the sponsors of the program.
 
Any FOSS organization that has a public community of contributors and is not too tightly tied to any one company can offer internships as part of the program. As one such community, oVirt is very interested in participating in OPW. We are seeking sponsorship from companies towards OPW participation and project ideas from community members willing to be mentors.

Proposal

Sponsorship for one OPW intern is $6,250-6,500 (USD), depending on the overall level of sponsorship from your company. The next several rounds of OPW are December 2014 - March 2015, May - August 2015, December 2015 - March 2016. The sponsorship for each round must be received by the GNOME Foundation in the beginning of the month for the corresponding internship round, after which the GNOME Foundation will take care of sending the stipend to the interns in three installments.

Please consider helping us getting your company to sponsor an oVirt OPW internship. If you are willing to help put this proposal forward at your company or can fund an internship, please e-mail Marina Zhurakhinskaya (marinaz at redhat.com) and Karen Sandler (karen at sfconservancy.org), who co-organize OPW, as well as include Brian Proffitt (bproffit at redhat.com). Many of the companies represented on oVirt board already provide sponsorship for other FOSS organizations participating in OPW, and Marina and Karen can help coordinate oVirt sponsorship request with other OPW sponsorship requests at your company.

For its overall sponsorship of OPW, your company can choose one of these game-changing levels:
 * Ceiling Smasher - $52,000 - 8 interns
 * Equalizer - $32,000 - 5 interns
 * Promoter - $19,000 - 3 interns
 * Includer - $6,250 - 1 intern

Motivation
 
Only 11% of respondents in the 2013 FOSS survey and 10% of Google Summer of Code participants are women. OPW provides women with a focused opportunity to gain experience in contributing to FOSS, which they might have felt discouraged from pursuing before. It is an effective way to help both women who have CS education and women interested in switching to technology at a later point in their career or without going to college become FOSS contributors.
 
By supporting OPW internships, participating companies are working upstream and improving the diversity of the FOSS community. In total, of 170 past OPW participants, 21 had full-session talks at FOSS conferences, 18 found employment or contract work with organizations sponsoring OPW, and 14 went on to participate in Google Summer of Code or Hacker School. Three past participants have organized local technology initiatives: Chicagoans Hacking on GNOME, the Nairobi Dev School, and Women in Free Software - India. Many find the program life-changing, as it introduces them to something they become passionate about and opens the door to new opportunities.

The program is very competitive, and applicants are required to make a contribution to the project they are interested in during the application process. For the last round, in which 40 participants were accepted, 120 applicants worked with a mentor to complete a contribution. All these applicants become FOSS contributors in the process of applying for the program, and many stick around to apply for the next round or pursue other FOSS opportunities.
 
Geographical Considerations
 
Because the internships are run by a non-profit organization with the main goal of promoting participation in the greater FOSS community, they are open to applicants from around the world. To avoid internships appearing as company internships, the participants should not be regularly working from a company office. Only non-profit organizations can seek interns to work from an office at a specific location with the help of the program. Companies are welcome to host some or all OPW interns in their geographical area in their office once a week.
 
OPW asks organizations to give equal consideration to all applicants, regardless of their geographical location. However, companies can encourage applicants from a specific geographical location by making additional efforts to advertise the program in that location.
 
Sponsorship Amount Details

The sponsorship per intern includes $5,500 stipend, $500 travel allowance, and a $250-500 administrative fee for the program. Providing $500 of travel funding per intern helps bring participants to conferences to meet their mentors and build on the relationships they have with their organizations. The administrative fee is used to cover intern payments transfer fees and to support the resources of the GNOME Foundation needed for administering and growing the program.

We hope that you will review this proposal and give it serious consideration! oVirt has one OPW internship sponsored by Red Hat this round, and we are hoping to continue our participation in this great program!

Peace,
Brian Proffitt

Community Liason
oVirt
Open Source and Standards, Red Hat - http://community.redhat.com
Phone: +1 574 383 9BKP
IRC: bkp @ OFTC