Mentorship Program from The Linux Foundation expands

The Linux Foundation announced it’s expanding its Mentorship Program in response to COVID-19 with seed funding from Intel. 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 provide 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.