Women's Summer Outreach Program 2006

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad cs toronto edu>]

GNOME to Sponsor Female Developers in a Summer Outreach Program

BOSTON, Mass - June 13, 2006 - The GNOME Foundation is offering USD$9000
to female students in order to promote the participation of women in
GNOME-related development.

The money originates from GNOME's participation in the Google "Summer of
Code" program (code.google.com/soc/), for which GNOME developers will
mentor 20 students working throughout the northern summer on
GNOME-related projects. This year GNOME received 181 applications to
Google's program, yet none were from women. The GNOME Foundation has
therefore chosen to reinvest Google's contribution into a new program
designed to increase the participation of women in GNOME. The program
has no official relationship with Google.

"Free software prides itself on being open to anyone with a good idea,
yet less than 2% of free software developers are female. We, as a
community, need to be actively working to change this statistic, and
programs like this one are a much needed step in the right direction."
said Hanna Wallach, a GNOME developer who is involved in several
projects that encourage women to participate in free software
development.

The Women's Summer Outreach Program is currently accepting applications
from female students. Accepted students will receive a stipend of USD
$3000 over a two month period. A pool of project ideas is provided at
www.gnome.org/projects/wsop/, though original proposals are also
encouraged. Projects may either be related to GNOME directly, or
indirectly via projects such as Gstreamer and Abiword. Each student will
be assigned a mentor to provide guidance throughout the program.

Vincent Untz, member of the GNOME Foundation board and coordinator of
the GNOME team for Google's "Summer of Code" program, explained: "Many
women have the skills required to contribute to Free Software projects
like GNOME, but may not see an opportunity to start working with us. By
initiating this program, not only do we want to highlight the issue, but
we also hope that this opportunity will help more women to get involved
in the long term."

Applications should be submitted using the form at
www.gnome.org/projects/wsop/. More information about the application
process may be found at the same location.