Introduction
Outreachy provides internships in open source and open science to people subject to systemic bias and impacted by underrepresentation in the technology industry where they are living. Women (both cis and trans), trans men, genderqueer people and people in any underrepresented group can apply for Outreachy. Also, residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander are invited to apply.
Outreachy internship projects may include programming, research, user experience, documentation, graphical design, data science, marketing, user advocacy, event planning, and more!
Cohorts
Outreachy runs two cohorts yearly; the Summer cohort which runs from late May to late August and the Winter cohort which runs from early December to early March.
Application
There are three stages involved in Outreachy's application process. They are:
Initial application
Contribution phase
Final application
This article will focus more on the Initial application as that is the phase that is currently on. As time goes by, I will be writing articles for the Contribution phase and the Final application which will be more detailed.
Initial application
In this phase, applicants are to answer questions that will determine their eligibility for the internship. Answers provided determine if an applicant is available to dedicate the needed time, belongs to one or more underrepresented groups etc
Some of the questions can be seen below:
What country will you be living in from May 29, 2023 to August 25, 2023?
Are you part of an underrepresented group (in the technology industry of the country listed above)? How are you underrepresented?
What systemic bias or discrimination would you face if you applied for a job in the technology industry of your country?
Does your learning environment have few people who share your identity or background? Please provide details.
What systemic bias or discrimination have you faced while building your skills?
The amount of information one has access to during the application matters. There is a lot of helpful information on Outreachy's site. The Applicant Guide has information about important dates, it talks about what open-source is, how one can contribute to open-source how one can answer questions, past projects etc. With the above, one can have a strong application.
Also, one can find lots of videos and articles written by past Outreachy interns where they state their experience. I watched almost every video on Youtube related to Outreachy and dedicated a book to writing tips I got from them before I began my application.
Contribution phase
During the Contribution phase, applicants are given access to a couple of open-source projects from which they are to pick one or two with goals they resonate with and skills they are comfortable with or can learn enough to make good contributions in about 3-4 weeks.
To be able to draft and submit a Final application, an applicant has to make at least one contribution to a project.
Though very competitive, aspirants should see this as an opportunity to network, help people that are stuck and LEARN.
Final application
Just like the Initial phase, there are questions here one has to answer to create a final proposal.