Rust Joins Outreachy: Expanding Mentorship Opportunities for Underrepresented Developers

What Is Outreachy and How Does It Differ from Google Summer of Code?

The Rust Project has a strong track record of supporting open-source mentorship initiatives, having participated in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) for three consecutive years and, previously, in OSPP. Now, the project is expanding its commitment by joining Outreachy starting with the May 2026 cohort. While Outreachy shares similarities with GSoC, several key differences set it apart.

• Application process: Outreachy requires applicants first to be accepted into the overall program before they can apply to specific communities. In contrast, GSoC applicants apply directly to projects.
• Contribution period: Outreachy mandates a dedicated period where applicants must make contributions to the community before submitting their final application. GSoC often encourages contributions but does not require them as strictly.
• Stipend funding: For GSoC, Google covers contributor stipends and overhead. Outreachy, on the other hand, relies on individual communities to fund their interns' stipends and program costs.

Outreachy focuses on providing internships to people from backgrounds that face underrepresentation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the tech industry. The program runs two internship cycles each year: one from May to August and another from December to March.

Rust’s Participation in the May 2026 Cohort

Due to limited funding and mentoring capacity, the Rust Project selected four interns for the May 2026 Outreachy cohort. Each intern will work on a project that advances the Rust ecosystem. Below are the three projects that have been announced so far.

Calling Overloaded C++ Functions from Rust

Intern: Ajay Singh
Mentors: teor, Taylor Cramer, and Ethan Smith

This project aims to implement an experimental feature that allows Rust code to call overloaded C++ functions. The work includes testing the feature in a few representative use cases to evaluate its practicality and correctness. This could significantly ease interoperability between Rust and existing C++ codebases.

Code Coverage of the Rust Compiler at Scale

Intern: Akintewe Oluwasola
Mentor: Jack Huey

This project focuses on developing workflows to run and analyze code coverage of the Rust compiler across its entire test suite and on ecosystem crates detected by crater. The goal is to identify areas where the compiler is inadequately tested—both internally and within the ecosystem—and to build tools for continuous coverage analysis. This will help maintain compiler quality as Rust evolves.

Fuzzing the a-mir-formality Type System Implementation

Intern: Tunde-Ajayi Olamiposi
Mentors: Niko Matsakis, Rémy Rakic, and tiif

This project aims to implement fuzzing for a-mir-formality, an in-progress model for Rust's type and trait system. Fuzzing will help uncover bugs and edge cases in this formal model, contributing to the long-term reliability of Rust's type-checking foundation.

Impact and Future Directions

By joining Outreachy, the Rust Project reinforces its dedication to diversity and inclusion in open source. The selected projects address critical areas—interoperability, compiler testing, and type system correctness—that benefit the entire Rust community. As the May 2026 cohort progresses, expect updates on each intern's contributions and the broader impact of this mentorship initiative.