Starting My Outreachy Internship with HOTOSM: Oluwanifemi's Day 1

The people I admire the most used to be healthcare professionals, like my eye doctor. Once, I spent a good time telling him how he was making lives better. I mean he helped me see better. That was noble to me.

Now you know my new set of favourite people? They are the ones who have chosen to dedicate their time to improving people's lives with open software. They come in different forms: open-source contributor/volunteer, maintainer, committer (I just learnt of this, courtesy of Open Source Guide). These people come together with the shared goal to build and improve software whose source code is available to everyone. As opposed to private proprietary software.

Read more on Open source vs Proprietary software here.

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It is with joy that I share that I will get my first experience contributing to open-source for the next 3 months. Through the Outreachy internship, I was selected to work with HOTOSM from May to August 2024.

Outreachy is a paid internship that supports underrepresented individuals in tech to contribute to open-source projects. And HOTOSM, the organisation I will be working with uses open mapping for humanitarian purposes, providing map data to aid in disaster management, community development and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.

I have had a great first week with HOTOSM. I received warm welcomes from my mentors, fellow intern and our coordinator.

This explains how I felt when I received the news that I was selected. I had put in a lot of effort during the contribution phase, but there were many contributors, so I wasn't sure about the outcome. I am incredibly grateful to have been selected and thankful for going through the contribution phase because it taught me to concentrate on tasks and get things done, no matter how many people were working towards the same goal.

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This is day 1 of forever making an impact through my work. I get to work on projects that will directly impact lives. I have long envisioned this and I am excited to begin. My name is Oluwanifemi, and I am now among my favourite group of people 😊.

My core values are compassion and optimism. I am driven by compassion for those in unfavourable conditions.

I also value optimism. I hope all things, I believe all things. Some people describe me sometimes as one who puts their head in the clouds 😂 (I must add though that it is not to the point of being counterproductive. Just enough to help me dream lofty dreams).