Today, the teams from Major League Hacking (MLH) and GitHub Education announced The MLH Fellowship, Powered by GitHub.
The Fellowship is a new kind of tech internship. It’s a 12-week program that provides “pods” of 8-10 students with the opportunity to level up their skills by working on Open Source. These students benefit from plenty of valuable support — not only from their fellow interns, but also through dedicated guidance of a full-time technical mentor.
As a fully-distributed company, we here at DEV have experienced firsthand the amazing opportunity created by being able to work with contributors and team members all across the world. The Fellowship provides a pathway for students around the globe to earn a stipend while spending 12 weeks making meaningful contributions to open-source projects.
DEV is absolutely honored to be joining the coalition of early partners supporting the MLH Fellowship, Powered by GitHub, joining leading companies like GitHub, Facebook, and the Royal Bank of Canada. We also feel incredibly lucky to be hosting a pod of students who will join to work on our own open-source project. Other open-source projects involved in the Fellowship included React and Homebrew. We are truly in great company, and we can’t wait to see all of the valuable technical contributions and fresh perspectives that these talented students bring to the projects and open-source ecosystem.
If you are a student that might be interested in applying, or an open-source project capable of getting involved, please check out the MLH Fellowship website for more information.
This is a wonderful program, and we’re so excited to be taking part.
Top comments (47)
This is going to be so great. I am sooo excited to meet our pod and help them jump into the exciting and often confusing/intimidating world of open source.
With some folks having their traditional internships displaced by COVID-19, it's a pleasure to be able to fill the gap and provide paid opportunities to contribute to both our organization and open source.
Agreed, thanks for being part of it Ben + DEV!
Thank you guys
The summer has always proven to be a great time for DEV's open source initiatives -- very excited for this continuation and to meet our student pod!!
We're so glad you're supporting the program! Excited for our fellows to work on DEV :)
This is really interesting. I wish working professionals could participate! 😜
Jon from MLH here :) We're actually going to be hiring professionals as full-time mentors for the interns, with a specific focus on folks who have been laid off due to COVID-19.
This is so great and thoughtful. What is the criteria to be a mentor?
You can apply here via our partners at Raise.dev :) fellowship.mlh.io/mentors
Interesting idea, would you think of it as participation in an "unpaid" kind of way? I'd imagine the amount the program is paying for interns, while totally reasonable for that sort of thing, wouldn't be a big driving factor for working pros... But would you mean like a way to work on open source in a more structured way for a period to level up your skills on the side of your main work?
Contributing to open source is definitely one of the best ways to level up your skills. It adds a lot of value to your profile and is a plus point to have an open-source contribution. In this time of the pandemic, it is easy to take out time from your regular office work to learn and practice new stuff.
I imagine the same can be done with the open-source contribution even if it is a small contribution like helping in the Readme. We can start something like an open-source contribution challenge as whenever someone does an open contribution may get a badge on his profile 😜
I can relate to that, once you get comfortable in a work setup the growth factor evolves to become more specific to the company needs, and if those are not well aligned it can be quite challenging or equally intimidating to seek out a new set of skills outside of the work environment
I imagine this is why lots of company do the "20% Project" type of thing like Google, but not everyone has access to that
This program seems like it could be a perfect setup for those folks as well
Ahh great partnership you scored!
Hi, Are working professionals (who have been laid off) during this pandemic eligible to apply for this MLH fellowship? I think this is a good opportunity to work on open source projects in a consistent and systematic way
Hey Sivakumars,
You can apply here!
fellowship.mlh.io/mentors
@jonmarkgo do you have any details on how this applies with the rules?
I am in a not so good position here. The company that selected us as interns for the summer has put us on hold for unspecified amount of time neither confirming nor denying the status of internship, and this fellowship ( which I'm highly interested in ) seems to be first come first serve. Guess I'll just have to wait 🤷♂️
It's actually not first come first served, we're going to be reviewing all eligible applications!
That's great!
Thanks!!
This is a great initiative!
Are we suppose to apply individually or in a group?
Individually... (I’m pretty sure)
Thanks! :D
I am really looking forward to applying.
This is great but unfortunately not open to people in the process of self-teaching. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to get similar experience in self-teaching? Are there open source projects that accept student interns, etc? I'm not sure how to even look for one at this point in the process.
Hello Jon Gottfried, I just have seen that MLH fellow application form updated there are more options related to education and reside. I submitted the old form Is it ok or I should re-submit my application?
Hello, I'm Current Living in Pakistan(my home-land) which is not include in MLH fellowship countries but my parents currently living in Canada and they have valid bank account in Canada can I apply for this fellowship?
That should be alright as long as Canada is your primary address
This looks super cool, I'd definitely apply - but I have school until the end of June.
Y'all know of any online opportunities for high-schoolers that start a bit later? (Or will this Fellowship happen another year?)
We do allow high school students (with parent/guardian permission) though I can definitely understand it might be hard to juggle schedules if school is still going on
This seems like a great opportunity for learning and diving into open source, especially for competitive programmers as it will help us in solving and dealing with real world problems with the help and guidance from industry professionals.
Is there any specific criteria for selection? I have basic knowledge in programming. Can I apply and get selected?
Hi Peter.
Thanks for this wonderful news. I am a student and I know the importance of being involved in an internship. Its definitely different world from college in terms of deadlines and work standards.
I am so pumped to apply for this. Any suggestion before applying?
This is great! Also any opportunities for self taught programmers to get involved?
Non-students can apply as mentors!
Awesome!
I'm interested to apply as a mentor for the next round! Could you possibly share your experience on that? xx
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