Empowering New Maintainers: Inside the OpenSSF Mentorship Program  🔗 **Source:** [Empowering New Maintainers: Inside the OpenSSF Mentorship Program](https://share.snipd.com/episode/f4b26fd6-39c2-48fd-b44f-9a9cb82baf7b) ## Highlights - **Mentorship Lowers The Barrier To Entry** - Mentorship lowers the intimidation barrier for newcomers lacking deep security backgrounds. - Kairo noted many beginners avoid open source; the program gives them entry, spreads security knowledge, and grows future contributors. Transcript: Kairo De Araujo Up for this? Well, besides security is something really important. There are a lot of people that are a little bit afraid to step in in open source products like that. Because they don't have like a huge, uh, secured, uh, background or, um, they are just like, uh, coming out of the university or, uh, learn, uh, coding, but they are not, um, let's say Comfortable to step in an open source. Right. Uh, it happened with me as well. Right. Everybody here once was like a beginner in something and we need to trust ourselves. And I think that it's really important for projects like our stuff to get new people in, new ideas, and also looking to the future, like keeping more contributors in the project or spreading The security to what we are doing, what the product is doing, because we know how it works. So like spreading the knowledge, it's not only talking about the product, but getting people involved in that. And we have some good engineers that would like to try it, and they don't have opportunity. And I think that, for example, this mentorship is a very good opportunity. And me as a maintainer, I need more contributors for my product because we know that the success and how the product can grow, it's based on contributions, right? People really writing code, understand how the product works. And this was our goal. Like, let's try to give opportunity to people to step in the project and give opportunity to people to understand how we can do security in different ways. Because our stuff is a really specific product based in the OpDate framework that's really complex. And maybe it can also give more knowledge to others to let's contribute with a project in a way that I can participate and maybe grow, get knowledge, and I don't know, get a new job or, you Know, just knowing a little bit more about the language or the service or how I can help the security and participate in OpenSSF as well. ([Time 0:04:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/04901ee4-e95c-4fdc-a352-f9caeff2d6b9)) - **Team-Based Mentoring Teaches Real Collaboration** - Running multiple mentees as a single team can teach real open source collaboration dynamics. - Kairo structured teams across time zones with documentation and overlapping features so mentees learned to work together. Transcript: Kairo De Araujo Few mentorships before, not in OpenSSF, but in other companies that I work at, helping junior engineers and so on. And usually we are afraid to have multiple mentees because how I will manage different people altogether in one focus. One minty, but at least three minties in the product in the way that we can try to work as a team. To not teach only about how to make the open source, but they could really feel how the open source works, how they can work from different time zones, from different products, and because We had people working documentation, another working a specific feature, and how this overlaps each other and how we can work as a team. This was something really that we did different in the product, giving a lot of freedom to them. We have the products that we want to accomplish as the goal of the mentorship, but let's try to work as a team with a very flexible way that we can help each other. And really this was very positive for the product last year. ([Time 0:07:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/690be6a0-217e-463e-9c7c-61281ea243ae)) - **Mentees Promoted To Maintainers** - Two of the three mentees from last year's rstuf mentorship became maintainers of the project. - Kairo described that they started as mentees, became contributors, and now help run the product alongside him. Transcript: Kairo De Araujo And, but what surprised me in the end, and I think we will have another podcast about that in the future, that will be that now all the three, two of the three mentees become maintainers Of the product. It means that they started as mentees, then they jump as contributors of the project. And right now they are helping how to run the product. And this is for me amazing. As a maintainer, it's really a relief for me, right? Because I have more people to help me running the product. ([Time 0:09:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7129c437-9335-4a10-8646-80bfb8e3a81c)) - **Start Onboarding Weeks Before The Start Date** - Start onboarding earlier to reduce chaos and give mentees time to set up environments. - Yesenia said maintainers had only a week previously; this year they plan pre-onboarding weeks before the 12-week mentorship. Transcript: Yesenia Yser One of the biggest challenge was the amount of time, right? And the maintainers had about a week to put it around the project description. They had a week to like shift through all the mentees and interview them and make their just election. So there was a lot of chaos to the front. So big kudos to them to like push through and find the mentees and get that program kind of running. I think once the program started running within a few weeks, it just kind of smooth and there was a lot less questions. There was a lot less friction. And what we decided to do this year is just start early. So we won't release the date just yet. You got to listen into a little bit further in the episode. ([Time 0:11:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3c3fdce7-0caf-4ca2-b5c7-c883707c1c97)) - **Set Clear Communication And Flexible Goals** - Communicate clearly and learn mentees' backgrounds before work begins. - Kairo advised mentors to set goals, be flexible with tasks, and reshape projects to fit mentees' skill levels. Transcript: Kairo De Araujo Well, communication is the key because everybody is remote. Everybody has different backgrounds. So I advise to really making clear the communication with the mentees. Understand what are the goals. Understand what are their backgrounds, right? And we have preset projects within the product to be done by the mentees. Be flexible as well because maybe you need to shape a little bit those products to fit well for the mentees. ([Time 0:13:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2f92f7dd-03fb-4d5e-98af-591628a0b5cf)) - **Mentees Do Pre-Onboarding And Ask Questions** - Don't be afraid to apply and do pre-onboarding to understand the project. - Kairo told mentees to ask questions, collaborate with fellow mentees, and get familiar with project goals before the cycle starts. Transcript: Kairo De Araujo I can say for the mentees is that don't be afraid to join. Don't care about your background or from where you are coming. You have something to help in the project. With your mentor and also work together. If you have other mentees together with you in the mentorship program, try to work together because everybody is here to help. So be relaxed, try to do the best you can, get committed with what you want to deliver. But as I said before to the mentors, communication, also communicate well. Ask questions and try to help as well because you will be, and try to do what I always say, try to do a good pre-onboarding, that it's like try to understand the project. ([Time 0:15:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f3d9f903-0d13-4ad7-ada1-3e4e2ad90f29)) - **Ask BEAR For Onboarding Document Support** - Use BEAR Working Group help to create or improve onboarding documents. - Yesenia offered that BEAR can assist maintainers short on capacity to produce clearer onboarding for mentees. Transcript: Yesenia Yser One thing i want to jump in and add is for the project maintainers if you need help with some of your onboarding documents, the Bear Working Group is working through a process to create Onboarding documents. So it is an added bonus that we can help you with that, especially if you're a single maintainer or your team is just over at capacity right now. ([Time 0:16:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d572a8ac-f042-4ad0-9ea0-77857c6bf8ee)) - **Remember The 2026 Mentorship Key Dates** - Note the 2026 mentorship calendar and evaluation checkpoints before applying. - Applications open March 24 and close April 12; onboarding May 5–29; mentorship June 1–Aug 21 with mid and final evaluations July 10 and Aug 28. Transcript: Yesenia Yser Yes. So the application will be released around March 24. And we'll be open for a few weeks, ending April 12. So that's a good amount of time. Check us out at OpenSSF on our socials, on Slack, follow me on LinkedIn, me and Cairo, OpenSSF. I will go ahead and be posting this and blasting it everywhere. Then from April 13th to April 30th, the mentors are going to be reviewing the applications. May 1st, you should expect a accept or decline notification by May 1st. May 5th to the 29th, we'll be working with getting you onboarded to the LF platform and onto the project. So this is when you'll be getting your environment up, getting any documentations. That could take some quiet time, so we'll ask for you to be a part of it. And then the mentorship kicks off June 1st to August 21st. Within there, these we forgot to mention. This is a paid mentorship. So there are two evaluation points. July 10th will be your first evaluation. After that, you get half of the siphon. And then August 28th, that's an important date for me, you get the final siphon from after you perform your evaluation. ([Time 0:17:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/caf77716-8c1c-4479-89ba-4de2d03c70f8)) - **Explore Multiple Participating Projects** - Multiple OpenSSF projects are participating so applicants should explore fits beyond the listed ones. - Yesenia named gittuf, rstuf, SBOMit, and Minder and encouraged checking GitHub, Slack, and BEAR welcome calls. Transcript: Yesenia Yser The bare working group perspective, we have, we didn't name the projects. We have get tough, our stuff, Our stuff. Thank you. S-Vomit and Minor that are coming on board as a mentorship. So if you're not sure what those are, take a moment. Go to the openssf.org, get involved page. Look at the working groups. Check out their GitHub. Get on Slack and check out the groups. Join one of the public calls. If you're too nervous or inadvert or i i dropped after my first call so don't worry um find different resources so you can start be be familiarized with the project that you might like And enjoy um we also have a bear welcome call that we did in january that walks through all the working groups. So that's also a good avenue to start. Let's say you look at the projects, none of them really excite you. Mind you, they are paid. You can check out some of the other working groups and start getting involved in there as well. Kairo De Araujo Yeah, even beside the mentorship, if you are not able to join the mentorship this summer, or if you don't feel comfortable yet to join, our self-product, Repository Salesforce, it's Really looking for new contributors. ([Time 0:20:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/013aede8-e892-41a1-9762-8fc8bd385562))