Outreachy report: September 2025

Summary

Program activities

• We have evaluated participation requests from 4 new communities. We expect to accept 1 of them, pending discussions about their current financial capabilities to participate in the program.
• We’re on track to accept enough applicants to (1) engage with all proposed projects but (2) not overwhelm our participating communities.
• We had difficult conversations about the current state of the program’s finances and possible strategies to balance program needs and financial limitations.

Unfortunately, this month’s report will have to be short and vague as my work involved handling a lot of sensitive and confidential information. Part of the reason why the Open Mentorship Handbook had to take the backseat in my responsibilities was due to demands to respond to ongoing critical financial discussions.

I spent time supporting both Omotola Omotayo’s monitoring of initial application reviews and Tilda Udufo’s exploration of new communities approaching us to participate. With the latter, the main challenge was communicating to communities that haven’t participated in the program for years that we can’t sponsor their participation due to a severe constraint of funds.

I’m in talks with Omotola Omotayo to re-structure the timeline and activities of the Open Mentorship Handbook, keeping in mind our current resources and limitations.

We’re preparing to accept all eligible communities and to open the contribution period in October. At the same time, we’re working on balancing current financial resources and an adequate level of support for communities and applicants alike.