March began with the End of Internship Social Call, marking the culmination of our time with the interns from the December 2023 Outreachy Cohort. Throughout their internships, we’ve followed their journeys through blog posts and feedback reports, but seeing them in a video chat adds a final, personal touch. The contagious energy in the virtual room stays with us long after the call ends. Here’s a snapshot of some of the faces that joined us on stage:
Our Outreachy mentors have dedicated themselves to guiding applicants in making contributions to various open source projects throughout March. It’s rewarding to reflect on how many individuals’ first steps into the world of open source were because of Outreachy.
The mentor communication channels have also been very active. Understanding the experiences of our mentors at different stages of the Outreachy program is very important for providing the support they need. We’ve also had great feedback about the mentor onboarding sessions we had before the start of the contribution stage.
Leading up to the contribution stage, we hosted multiple mentor onboarding calls over a two-week period to assist mentors and coordinators. Throughout the Outreachy program, we’ve collected valuable insights from mentors about their participation experiences. We’ve consolidated this feedback into a document and shared it with mentors who participated in the onboarding calls.
Quite a number of mentors joined the onboarding calls, many of whom joined to ask questions, learn about Outreachy’s processes, or simply engage with the community. As part of these sessions, we also reviewed community projects and provided suggestions for improving project descriptions for easier contribution for applicants.
Given the success of this initiative, we aim to expand upon it and develop more initiatives that support our mentors. Our goal is to ensure they have the necessary resources and guidance to effectively mentor Outreachy interns.
One of the highlights of this month was successfully making a commit to the Outreachy website. I’ve been investing a few hours each week to learn Python and Django, enabling me to contribute effectively to the website. Learning Python has been an enjoyable journey, especially with its syntactic similarities to Ruby, which I’m already familiar with.
Here’s a link to the Pull Request that I created to edit the mentor contribution stage email: https://github.com/outreachy/website/pull/571
As the Outreachy Mentor Advocate, my responsibility is to enhance the experience of our mentors and coordinators. Through my contributions to the website, I can ensure a smoother user experience for all involved in the Outreachy program.
Tilda's Thoughts 