GNOME's OPW Women Program Becomes Outreachy

The Outreach Program for Women (OPW) by GNOME has now been renamed to Outreachy.

The GNOME OPW has been the program encouraging women and those associating as women to get involved with open-source software whether it be actual code development or other related tasks like working on documentation, graphics, etc. In return, the women gain experience and are provided with a few thousand dollars. This winter is when the X.Org Foundation became the latest project involved with the OPW.

The OPW has now been renamed to Outreachy with a mission of "Free and Open Source Software internships for people from underrepresented groups." Outreachy is focused less on just pushing women into free software to instead all underrepresented groups. The Outreachy page explains, "Outreachy helps people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved. We provide a supportive community for beginning to contribute any time throughout the year and offer focused internship opportunities twice a year with a number of free software organizations...The upcoming round of internships is open to women (cis and trans), trans men, genderqueer people, and all participants of the Ascend Project regardless of gender. We are planning to expand the program to more participants from underrepresented backgrounds in the future."

GNOME continues to manage the infrastructure for Outreachy while it's supported by organizations like Red Hat, the Software Freedom Conservancy, etc.

Those in underrepresented groups wishing to get involved with free software can learn more via the GNOME.org Outreachy site. Applications for the next round of the program are due by 24 March.