IBM is reinforcing its commitment to diversity and inclusion in the open source field with the launch of the IBM Open Source Community Grant.
Announced at this week’s All Things Open conference in Raleigh, NC, the grant — which will be awarded quarterly — will see the winner receive $25k in cash and $25k in Cloud Credits in order to support their efforts dedicated to education and skill building for women, minorities, and/or under-served communities.
The inaugural grant is going to Girls Who Code, a non-profit organization working to increase the number of women working in computer science.
“This grant will help close the gender gap in tech, and bring in new minds with new ideas,” says Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. “Gender equity is so important to our industry and it’s wonderful to work with IBM to achieve that.”
Other finalists in this quarter’s grant competition were Outreachy (Organized by the Software Freedom Conservancy), which sets up three-month paid internships on open source projects for people who ordinarily might not have those opportunities. And PyLadies, an international mentorship group of the Python Software Foundation, helping women become active in the Python open-source community.
You can read more about the grant scheme on the IBM Developer blog.
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