How can you become a C4GT contributor?

My sole purpose in writing this blog is to share in-depth details about the selection process of C4GT.

I am writing this because I have been selected recently as a contributor for C4GT' 23 which I am super excited about. I was getting many queries about the selection process so I decided to share them with you all here.

What is C4GT?

We all know India has witnessed a recommendable and remarkable growth of Digital Public Goods, especially in recent times. The launch of Namma Yatri, a collaborative effort of Beckn Open Collective, Juspay, and Auto Rickshaw Drivers Union Bangalore, exemplifies this trend.

Code for GovTech(C4GT) is introduced as India's first dedicated mentoring program, which aims at creating a community which can build and contribute to global DPGs and extend the growth further.

What do we get by becoming a C4GT contributor?

This an amazing opportunity to work on live open-source projects which are targeted at solving population-scale governance challenges. One-on-one mentoring from expert and experienced techies. A stipend of around 1 Lakh INR for the duration of the program. An opportunity to secure PPI and PPO after the program ends.

The program is open to students and working professionals who possess the requisite technical skills.

What is a proposal?

Basically all the participating organizations, release the problem statements/ issues list, you will have to go through them and whichever issue you like you can write a proposal for it, proposal is basically a draft (word docs) containing your personal information along with a detailed approach of your proposed solution to the problem statement, you can go through past years C4GT and GSOC proposals format remains the same.

How to apply?

This year(2023) the program was announced on Unstop platform. I too got to know about the program through Unstop.

So initially we had to register for the program on unstop. Registration comprised of just the basic details about you.

Then comes the proposal which had to be submitted within the time frame from 15th May to 12 Jun. We had the option to submit up to 3 proposals. All could be edited and submitted anytime before 12 Jun.

Now in this duration of preparing the proposals, we had to interact with the mentors and get their input on the proposals. A few mentors conducted interviews too, which were mainly to understand how aware you are of the project and the tech stack involved in it.

These discussions were mainly carried out in the discord channel of C4GT each project had its group of discussion over discord, we could join any of them. This time had to be considered very important since all the queries related to our proposal had to be asked now. Because all these answers to the queries related to our proposal play a very important role in preparing and coming up with an adequate solution for the issue our proposal consists of.

Make sure you also try making open-source contributions to the C4GT projects. This year many projects were new so not many good first issues were created. But keep in mind all the open-source contributions count and can be mentioned in the proposal. So keep your Github profile active and make wise contributions.

Once done with the proposal we had to submit it as a pdf with the specified naming format mentioned in the website.

Also, keep in mind end date of registrations and submission of proposals were different and if you do not register on time you will not be able to submit your proposals further.

After all this the application process was done we had to wait for around 10 days for the results and then the list of names of the contributors with their respective project names was released. This year 103 contributors were selected for C4GT which is a huge number. So make sure you give it a try next year!

Also, do let me know if you would like a detailed blog on how to prepare a proposal! I will surely work on it!

So here's my LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigamsimran/ feel free to connect and reach out in case of any queries.

Here's my GitHub profile link as well: https://github.com/simran142002

References

https://unstop.com/competitions/code-for-govtech-2023-samagra-governance-675801