Board Public

Stephan, can you do some research on a scholarship (Stipendium)?
Some collected materials follow:

• Gabriele Ponzo (has no access to this ticket) wants to add ideas, maybe you can poke him
• K-J's son could be one of the first beneficiaries
• K-J's wife supports the proposal, I can follow-up with the first idea with her to hear what she thinks
• another community friend in whose name this could happen too is John McCreesh (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/01/24/r-i-p-john-mccreesh/)
• we should ask other entities what they do, e.g. FSFE, OFE, OKF, RedHat
• OSBA has nothing comparable
• Lothar has contacts to SUSE if needed
• Klaus-Jürgen was interested to bring young people in the project, e.g. his son, so the scholarship should support a pupil or student intersted in open source
• activities should be around TDF or LibreOffice, but no strict bindings/rules
• proposed duration is one year, with a monthly payment
• nomination should happen via MC and board (and maybe K-J's wife)
• nominations can be done e.g. annually at LibOCon, maybe from the country where LibOCon is hosted
• we need a mentor/patron for the student
• normal scholareships here in Germany are likely around 300 € per month
• candidates should give some ideas what they want to do inside the community
• no binding result/target is required, but a short report in between or at the end is required
• further information might be available at https://www.servicezentrum-deutschlandstipendium.de/foerdervereinbarungen
• further information might be available at https://www.mwk.niedersachsen.de/download/119945
• budget is 3.000 €

What his wife told me: "The idea of a scholarship is exactly what he would love to do. Being the youngest of five kids in a family that did not have much money, he was always trying to provide opportunities to younger people and was very active with the youth work in his local church too."

Plan is to have some first idea by LibOCon

summary status updated

Are there already updates on this?

• huge interest
• will point me to a contact within the IT department of TUM
• Deutschlandstudium (i.e. monthly funding: first half 150€ from TDF, second half 150€ from German gvmt); see uploaded flyer

after a 90 min phone call last monday with Dr. Frank Frieß (head of fundrasing at TU Munich) my proposal is to go/start with option 1#

• yearly costs fix 1.800 EUR from TDF plus same amount given from the german government
• maximum impact because amount is doubled. So, 300 EUR monthly granted to the student
• process is fully handled by the university (application, award)
• deadline for the decision is by around end of July 2021 to start scholarship in the winter semester 2021/2022
• further/detailed information: https://www.deutschlandstipendium.de/de/english-1700.html

• extremely complicate to reach out to a great number of students who might be interested
• students, especially IT-students in great demand, might not be interested if the granted amount is below monthly 300 EUR. So, that might at least double the yearly costs for TDF in comparison with option 1#
• advantage: TDF decides who the scholarship will be granted to, BUT has to fully handle all the process

• grant prize money on a concrete topic for bachelor | master | doctor thesis
• problem: define/find topics worse to be granted

Some update from the last team call:

• update on scholarship (Stephan)
  • could contact also KJ's church
  • any church using LibreOffice?
    -> Florian to reach out to KJ's wife for the church contact

Some feedback from a personal school contact of mine (in case we're doing things without e.g. Cafe Netzwerk, but directly):

I've been thinking about this a bit - it's actually extremely difficult to get something like this going. Access to schools via central offices is deliberately clearly limited, otherwise we wouldn't be able to save ourselves from requests. Therefore, from my point of view - if you are thinking about a Germany-wide strategy - the only way is to apply via the general channels, the press, etc., or via personal contacts in order to get the schools interested. - or via personal contacts to start the "first round".

• -> Stephan to prepare summary and required documents, sync with Florian next week

Stephan will handle Deutschlandstipendium application (w/ Florian's help where needed)

work in progress; some delay due to holiday of staff member of the Munich university

2021-07-01: scholarship program signed for one year starting October 1st.
to be reviewed end of 2022/Q1