Recently, Outreachy announced selected Interns for May 2021 to August 2021 round and we have 4 interns with us. This blog introduces them to the community. If you see them around, please welcome them and share some virtual cookies.

Outreachy is a paid, remote internship program that helps traditionally underrepresented people in tech make their first contributions to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities. Fedora is participating in this round of Outreachy as a mentoring organization. We asked our Outreachy interns to tell us some things about themselves!
Here are they, in their own words

Hey there! I’m Dhairya. I’m an undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science at IIIT Delhi. If we met in person you would be greeted by a lanky, short-haired girl exuding a ton of nervous energy. In my spare time I enjoy reading books, painting (frequently photoshopping myself into those paintings), and letting my imagination run wild.
Getting selected as an Outreachy intern is probably the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me. I enjoyed working so much that I didn’t even feel like I was working during the contribution period. Looking back, it’s wonderful how far my journey has taken me so soon. I used to hear a lot of conversations about open source and programs like Outreachy and GSoC in college, but I always thought I lacked knowledge and skills and found all of it rather intimidating. After the contribution period, I’ve come to love a lot of things I was scared of.
I’ve found the Fedora community to be a genuinely welcoming and friendly place. Needless to say, I’m glad I applied and I’m really happy to be here!

I am Josseline Perdomo, a junior Software Engineer from Caracas, Venezuela 😊. Last year, during the quarantine I had the chance to get started as a contributor in open-source communities. My journey became stronger in the Hacktoberfest 2020, during this time I considered applying to an internship at Outreachy. Although I have previous experience as a user, I never expected to be part of Fedora. After 2 months as a contributor, I found in Fedora a community open to newcomers, open to answer questions, and give any help to start as a contributor. I found in my mentor as well other people folks very compromised with their roles which have been very welcoming and very involved in the diversity in Open Source. Besides coding, I love listening to music, watching movies and series, make some gardening 🌱, and writing.

I’m  a computer science student from Seville, Spain. Some years ago I graduated with a degree in art history and then I decided to study computer science. After looking around all projects from this Outreachy season I chose to contribute to rpm-ostree. I found an issue marked as friendly and I asked for it. What I didn’t expect was that the issue wasn’t as easy as it seemed at the beginning. But the project’s mentors divided the task into smaller ones and by the end of the contribution period I found myself capable of solving it all. It is a very rewarding experience to find out that, with some support, we are capable of overcoming those fears and accomplishing more than we thought. I’m thrilled to participate in this experience and so very grateful of how welcoming everyone has been at Fedora and Outreachy.

I’m Manisha Kanyal, a sophomore B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering student from India. The project for which I’ve been selected as an Outreachy intern is “Improve Fedora QA dashboard” and I’m enthusiastic and grateful for this opportunity. It’s going to be a great learning experience for me under the guidance of Lukas and Jose. The contribution period was a good learning experience. I got to work on a real-life project which will be used by fedora community veterans/newcomers.
The mentors of this project are amazing people, they always respond to the queries asked by contributors and help in any way they can. Contributing to the Fedora QA Landing Page specifically is a great opportunity for me because it gave me exposure to that field that I’m learning and will try to make a career into.
Before applying to this project, I read many articles of previous Outreachy interns and from that, I acknowledged that I wanted to work on something that many people will use in real life. Looking forward to having a great summer.

Best wishes for their internship period and beyond!

We wish them all a successful journey as Outreachy interns and look forward to hearing about their experiences and project updates as we go.