FOSS Backstage 2025

Anatomy of an open internship program: How we run Outreachy
2025-03-11 , bUm Box

Outreachy has been promoting and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in free and open source software for 15+ years — in 2023, we surpassed the mark of 1,000 successful internships! In this talk, we'll open source our internship formula to empower the next generations of free and open source leaders, activists, and contributors.


Outreachy has been promoting and supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in free and open source software for 15+ years — in 2023, we surpassed the mark of 1,000 successful internships! We've talked extensively about the program's evolution and its successes in the past, but we seldom have the opportunity to reveal what goes on behind the scenes.

That changes with this talk — here, we'll open source our internship formula to empower the next generations of free and open source leaders, activists, and contributors. We'll talk about our core principles; the internship model that allows us to support our community of interns, mentors, and coordinators; and how our open internship and mentorship guidelines and experience can help you empower minoritized groups in your community!

Anna e só (/ˈɐ̃.nɐ e ˈsɔ/) is a Brazilian information systems architect currently living in Goiânia, Goiás. They're one of the Outreachy organizers and an Information Systems undergraduate at Universidade Federal de Goiás. They wear many hats, but their heart is in systems thinking and practice. Over the last decade, they've worked with (and learned from) the Wikimedia community (working on initiatives to improve MediaWiki's technical writing, localization, and internationalization practices), MediaLab/UFG (building Brazilian free and open source projects such as Mapas Culturais and Tainacan), LAPPIS/UnB (translating the Public Money, Public Code expert brochure into Brazilian Portuguese), and Open Collective (revamping and improving their user-facing documentation). They're blind, and they take pride in offering open projects a unique point of view.