To round out its outreach activities for 2012, the Sahana Software Foundation has launched its first internship program! More than 80 applications were received and six students or recent graduates – double the number originally conceived – were chosen out of them to help develop Sahana’s Eden software, and increase the awareness of Sahana with external stakeholders. Under the guidance of their mentors (Leslie Hawthorn, Mark Prutsalis, Michael Howden and Fran Boon), Ashwyn, Somay, Mohanty, Piyush, Marine and Estève will gain experience in the technology, humanitarian and disaster management sectors. We’ll be bringing you more updates on each intern, his or her project and what they hope to achieve by working with the Sahana Software Foundation over the next couple of weeks.

Michael Howden, Sahana Board Member and father of the internship program, was kind enough to share his thoughts with us on how the program will impact the Sahana community:

“This is an exciting initiative for the Sahana Software Foundation and we see it as an opportunity to build capacity and grow our community as well as giving you the opportunity to work with a humanitarian open source project.”

The internship program’s original goal was to keep students engaged after they already had completed projects with Sahana through Codeathons, the Google Summer of Code or other academic projects.  However, after a few discussions, the Sahana team decided to extend the program to non-software interns. “You don’t have to write code to contribute!” as Michael says, “Communication and documentation are a big part of the work we have to do”.

Running from December 2012 to March 2013, the program proceeds on a month by month basis, with tasks assigned to the interns by their mentors: running tests, fixing bugs, consolidating documentation for users, writing blog posts, refining Sahana’s social media strategy, etc. Interns are expected to work an average of 4 hours per week and will receive a certificate of participation and 500 USD at the end of the program.

All the interns were introduced to each other and the wider project community during today’s monthly Sahana community call and are already active on the projects Discussion mailing list. Please say hello to us on-list or in #sahana on Freenode!