Applications for winter Outreachy internships open [LWN.net]

The application for the (northern-hemisphere) Outreach winter internship cycle is open, with applications due by October 23. "Outreachy is paid, remote, three month internship program that helps people traditionally underrepresented in tech make their first contributions to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities."

From:		Outreachy Organizers <organizers-AT-outreachy.org>
To:		announce-AT-lists.outreachy.org
Subject:		[Outreachy announcement] Outreachy applications open for Dec/Mar internships!
Date:		Thu, 7 Sep 2017 12:32:29 -0700
Message-ID:		<20170907193229.7xqeg3zsu4owrjiq@macbeth>

Applications for the Outreachy December 2017 to March 2018 internships
are now open:

https://www.outreachy.org/apply/

Outreachy is paid, remote, three month internship program that helps
people traditionally underrepresented in tech make their first
contributions to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities.
Interns are paid a stipend of $5,500 and a travel stipend of $500.

https://www.outreachy.org

The timeline for this round is:

Sept. 7, 2017           Applications open
Oct. 23, 2017           Applications and contributions deadline
Nov. 9, 2017            Accepted interns announced
December 5, 2017 to
March 5, 2018           Internships period 

Please read through the application instructions and eligibility
requirements carefully. The instructions have changed a bit since the
last Outreachy round, and we've updated the application with new
required eligibility questions.

We currently have eight Free and Open Source communities who are ready
to take contributions from applicants, and we expect to have about
seven more join in the next couple of weeks.  We'll send another
announcement once we have their landing pages in place.

If you have any questions about eligibility, please contact
organizers@outreachy.org. If you can't get in contact with a mentor or
you're having trouble choosing which project(s) to apply to, you can
contact our mentors mailing list at mentors@lists.outreachy.org

Good luck applying!

Sarah Sharp
Outreachy Organizer
_______________________________________________
Announce mailing list
Announce@lists.outreachy.org
https://lists.outreachy.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/anno...

to post comments

Conflicted

Posted Sep 9, 2017 13:56 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

I get what Outreachy is trying to do, but still it makes me uneasy. Their eligibility requirements for the US are extensive, but really if they inverted the criteria to say who is not eligble, it would read: "You're not eligible if you're a white, straight, cisgendered male."

I'm not complaining for myself. I'm a transgender woman, so I've aced that eligibility requirement. But I still can't help having an uneasy feeling that though the goals are noble, the means are questionable.

It's really tough because the tech world is pretty hard on some people (mostly women---sexism seems like the biggest problem wrt discrimination) but I don't know if this is the solution to counter it.

Conflicted

Posted Sep 9, 2017 20:29 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm a cis, white, straight male. I have no problems whatsoever with Outreachy.

It'd be very different if it were the only game in the town, but it's not even close.

Conflicted

Posted Sep 10, 2017 13:35 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Part of my unease is that I don't feel it addresses the problem head-on. To do that, you need to call out the "bro"-ey culture in tech and confront it directly. Still, their hearts are in the right place which is why my subject is "Conflicted" and not "Opposed".

Conflicted

Posted Sep 10, 2017 10:10 UTC (Sun) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

No, the following men are not eligible even when they are residents of the USA: Arabs, anybody from the entire Asian continent*. Also "Pacific Islands" is kind of ambiguous, that definition doesn't usually cover the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, etc (they are sometimes considered part of the Asian continent), so can you apply if you're Filipino?

I used to be uneasy about Outreachy, but for opposite reasons to you, actually. It seems like sponsoring individual interns is a pretty inefficient/low-yield way of increasing diversity in FOSS, compared to the positive publicity that the sponsors get from it. Compare Outreachy to programmes that try to get entire classrooms, across many different schools, working on software (or even hardware, or other traditionally-male areas). Such programmes are not as sexy, there isn't a cool project that the organisers can point to and say "our star intern did that"---but long-term, it would seem to tackle the real problems a lot more effectively (i.e. that women are dissuaded from an early age to engage in tech, the communities they live in don't have the resources to provide specialised software tuition, and many others).
So Outreachy seems more like a way for the Outreachy intern hosts to hire the very cream of the underrepresented crop, and get publicity brownie points for it, without changing much about the underlying problem.

OTOH, the Outreachy Wikipedia article states that "The goal of Outreachy is to create a positive feedback loop," presumably meaning that these star interns then go on to do their own thing to increase diversity. And the Outreachy website [0] provides a list of past interns who have done just that (search the page for "Why Sponsor Outreachy?"). That allays my concerns a bit, and it does seem to work.

[0] https://www.outreachy.org/sponsor/

* I don't say "Asians" because I believe in the USA that term is colloquially used to refer to people from East Asia (Japan, Koreas, Vietnam etc), while in the UK its colloquially used to refer to people from South-East Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka)

Conflicted

Posted Sep 12, 2017 7:20 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

One aspect to think about is that there are people who want to fund this sort of diversity. If free software has a diversity organisation, then we can get some of this funding. Otherwise the funding will go somewhere else, possibly to funding non-free software.

This say their aim is to advance diversity, but their eligibility criteria discriminates against non-Americans

Posted Sep 12, 2017 22:25 UTC (Tue) by skissane (subscriber, #38675) [Link] (2 responses)

By my reading, their criteria say that non-LGBT men are only eligible to apply if they are US residents or nationals. So, for example, a non-LGBT male Native American male is able to apply, but a non-LGBT Australian Aboriginal male is ineligible? They say they want to increase diversity in tech – how is discriminating against non-Americans doing that?

They have a list of ethnic/racial groups who they consider disadvantaged/underrepresented, and I agree those groups are underrepresented in the US context. But, in a global context, even very underprivileged Americans (and residents of similarly prosperous countries) are actually much more privileged than much of the world's population–but their criteria discriminate against those who lack the privilege of Americanness. Their criteria say that a non-LGBT male Syrian refugee living in a Middle Eastern refugee camp (such as a Yezidi fleeing ISIS's genocide), or a non-LGBT male Rohingya who has just fled for their lives across the border to Bangaldesh, is ineligible, whereas a non-LGBT male middle class American from one of the listed ethnic/racial groups is eligible – I really struggle to see how that position is doing anything to advance diversity in tech.

This say their aim is to advance diversity, but their eligibility criteria discriminates against non-Americans

Posted Sep 12, 2017 23:14 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

I was involved in administration of a charity and reporting requirements REALLY become complicated if you do international activity and want to qualify for 501(c)(3). And you need it if you want to get donations to be tax-exempt.

Expanding Outreachy internationally is a good goal, though.

They say their aim is to advance diversity, but their eligibility criteria discriminates against non-Americans

Posted Sep 12, 2017 23:37 UTC (Tue) by skissane (subscriber, #38675) [Link]

Yes but they have expanded it internationally to non-Americans who are LGBT or women.

If they simply said "US residents/nationals only", I could understand it as a purely national initiative (nothing necessarily wrong with that). I struggle to see what possible regulatory requirement could allow them to expand it globally to LGBT people and women but not to non-LGBT men from disadvantaged backgrounds (such as refugees, indigenous peoples, the least developed countries, countries afflicted by war or famine, etc).