The Sahana Software Foundation has been named one of twenty mentoring organizations for the Google Code-In 2010.

The Google Code-In is a Google contest to introduce pre-university students to the many kinds of contributions that make open source software development possible. The contest begins on November 22, 2010.

The Code-In is a very different program than GSOC; it is more of a contest where pre-university students claim tasks and complete them in return for prizes. Most of these tasks may take only hours to complete; and students will need to complete many tasks to maximize their prize earnings. We will pick one student as Sahana’s grand prize winner, and that student and an accompanying adult will win a trip to Mountain View to visit Google headquarters.

Unlike the Google Summer of Code, which is all about writing code, the Code-In has eight categories of tasks that students can work on – only one of which is coding, and includes documentation, testing, translation, research, outreach, user interface and training.

We see the Google Code-In as an opportunity to get young people excited about contributing to open source projects even before they get to colleges and universities. It has always been a goal of ours to reach out to students in this age group and we are really excited about supporting open source community development in this way. Please help us spread the word and encourage any pre-university students that you may know to participate in the Code-In with Sahana.

Mentors are needed to help us document our tasks and to be available as a resource if needed. If you are willing to help mentor and support this program, please sign up with the Sahana Software Foundation on Google’s GCI site.

For more information, visit the Sahana 2010-11 Google Code-In Program Page.