Linux Foundation Expands Mentorship Program in Response to COVID-19

Program will support hundreds of displaced developer interns across diverse set of open source projects and communities

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Apr 23, 2020, 11:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it's expanding its Mentorship Program with seed funding from Intel in response to COVID-19. The Program will grow to support interns who have been displaced as a result of the global pandemic and to give individuals an opportunity to reskill for some of the most sought-after, highly paid careers in the world.

Intel is leading funding for this expansion with a $250,000 commitment. The Linux Foundation is investing an additional $100,000 and is calling on leaders throughout the industry to match this support in order to offer opportunities to aspiring technical talent during these unprecedented times.

"During these challenging times, our ability to come together to help cultivate the next generation of software developers is more important than ever," said Melissa Evers-Hood, vice president at Intel. "The Linux Foundation's Community Bridge program will engage the community building mission-critical applications and Intel is proud to support developers as they participate in this initiative."

The Linux Foundation Mentorship Program is designed to enable developers to experiment, learn and contribute to open source communities while strengthening open source projects and building an increasingly skilled and diverse talent pool of developers. Job placements as a result of the program are common and have included interns taking positions at leading technologies companies that include Intel, Google, Red Hat, IBM and more.

"Our commitment today and always is to protect the health and safety of our communities and staff and support the ongoing needs required to continue building the world's most critical software infrastructure," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation. "One of the ways we can do that is to ensure the rising stars from throughout the developer community can learn, grow and contribute no matter the circumstances."

The Mentorship Program offers interns and mentees the opportunity to work on some of the world's most popular open source projects, including Linux, Kubernetes and Hyperledger, among others. Mentors of the Program have included key developers from the world's largest open-source software initiatives. Mentees enhance their technical skills while learning the open-source culture and collaboration norms, including tools and infrastructure.

Due to this unprecedented moment for those who have been displaced from internships or full-time employment, the Linux Foundation's expanded Mentorship Program will accept applications and conduct enrollments on a rolling basis. To apply, please visit: https://communitybridge.org

About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation's projects are critical to the world's infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation's methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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SOURCE The Linux Foundation