I’m pleased to share that after over a year of work and planning, our very first cohort of Discover Drupal students is starting July 1st! Discover Drupal, a pillar of our new Drupal Talent & Education program, is designed to unlock opportunities for people who have been underrepresented in the open-source community.

With the generous support of our sponsors Kanopi Studios, Elevated Third, Lullabot, and training partners Drupal Easy, Mediacurrent, Evolving Web, and Drupalize.me, we were able to offer full training scholarships to 8 students based in North America. Each student also received a refurbished laptop, a 1-year Drupalize.me subscription, a full scholarship for DrupalCon 2022, and will receive support for launching their career in Drupal.

The students will each work with an assigned trainer, depending on their career trajectory, and will have access to a network of 23 Discover Drupal mentors across the globe. The mentors will be available to students during set weekly office hours and will help the students through their journey from training through the final project.

All of our wonderful mentors are identifiable by the Discover Drupal mentor badge on their Drupal.org profile. They will each receive contribution credits for their volunteer work throughout the program.

Over the coming months, we will be introducing each student participating in the program by sharing more about them in a blog post and through our social media channels. Stay tuned!

This program has been in the works since 2019 when Gwendolyn Anello of Drupal Easy first approached the Drupal Association to talk about developing a program to help bring more diverse talent to Drupal. Many members of the community had already been formulating ideas for how to develop such a program. Our Executive Director, Heather, and I had been envisioning a similar program as part of our goals for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

After many months of conversations, we asked training organizations to get involved and connected with our super-star volunteer project manager, Allison Manley of Kanopi Studios. Along with Allison, the trainers collaborated and helped us think through a pilot program utilizing their existing curriculum. I’m deeply grateful for the work of this group and so thrilled that the Drupal Association is able to provide support as the convener of this new program. Thank you for all that you have done to champion this work. I’m hopeful that we will scale and grow this program and ultimately achieve the goal of a more diverse Drupal.

If you’d like to learn more about the program, please visit www.drupal.org/discover-drupal.

We would love your help to support bringing our current cohort of students to DrupalCon in 2022 to meet with potential employers. Your support will help ensure we can continue to grow this program. If you are interested in being a leader to create a more diverse Drupal community by becoming an individual supporter, you can donate today.

You can still become an organization sponsor for the 2021 program year to help get our students to DrupalCon next spring or express your sponsorship commitment to keep the program growing for 2022! Contact me at drupaltalent@association.drupal.org to learn more.