Today, we’re pleased to announce that Major League Hacking (MLH) is partnering with Facebook Open Source and the React Team to offer scholarships to developers who self-identify as Black or of the African diaspora to participate in the Fall 2020 MLH Fellowship.
The MLH Fellowship is an educational program that provides up-and-coming developers with real world hands-on experience working on Open Source projects with the mentorship of experienced engineers. In our inaugural Summer 2020 program, nearly 150 developers from 23 countries became MLH Fellows and contributed to a wide range of projects like Homebrew, React, Flask, CircuitPython, and others. The Open Source projects that MLH Fellows contribute to are used by tens of millions of developers around the world, and provide the foundation for modern software engineering.
As an organization whose mission is to empower hackers, MLH believes strongly that an inclusive, welcoming, and equitable hacker community is core to accomplishing that. Providing these scholarships is an important step in that direction.
It is important to both the MLH Fellowship and the wider Open Source community for contributors and maintainers to not only represent the wide array of developers using these tools, but also to represent the variety of perspectives and life experiences present in the end users of all technology. These scholarships for the MLH Fellowship enable us to provide more opportunities to students who are often underrepresented or marginalized in the tech industry and to leverage MLH’s platform to support the work of hackers who are black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC).
We are excited to meet the next batch of MLH Fellows, and grateful to both Facebook’s React Team and the Facebook Open Source team for partnering with us in our mission to empower hackers of all backgrounds. The Facebook Open Source team was one of MLH’s inaugural partners when we first launched the Fellowship program this summer and the first to then double-down on a year-long Fellowship program with MLH starting this fall.
If you’re interested in joining our full time or part time Open Source Fellowship program this Fall, you can apply now at https://fellowship.mlh.io/. MLH Fellowship applications are assessed separately from scholarship applications. Accepted Fellows will be able to apply for scholarships before the program begins.
Happy hacking!