Our Scholarship programme is aimed at directly supporting folks from underrepresented groups in tech by giving them the means to attend our conferences. Last year, we were able to give out 125 tickets for people from around the world — our largest turnout ever and one of the largest scholarship programmes of any non-profit tech conference to that date!
Unfortunately, things are looking a lot less exciting this year. The reasons for this are twofold: We are not selling nearly enough Diversity Support Tickets, which directly benefit our Scholarship Programme, and we are currently lacking Diversity Sponsors, who contribute financially to our Scholarship budget. Last year, our sponsor Mercedes-Benz.io generously donated funds to enable 30 additional ticket scholarships.
Unfortunately, all of this has led us to have to suspend the scholarship process for two weeks because we do not have the necessary budget. We first aimed for sending out responses, on March 24, but had to postpone to March 29, and then April 5. We hope to provide feedback as soon as we can recalculate our budget and make the necessary adjustments.
In order to help us be able to award more scholarships, you can support us in the following ways:
What you could do as a person:
- Buy a Diversity Support Ticket (also available for CSSconf EU)! This is by far the easiest way, and you get a conference ticket in the process.
- Directly support our Scholarship budget.
What your employer may be able to do:
Does your company have a diversity hiring program or something similar? Could you get us in touch with the folks responsible for investing those budgets? We are happy to figure out any custom Diversity Sponsorship packages that suit your needs. Contact us at contact@jsconf.eu for more information.
Our Scholarship program is an integral part of our conference, and we wholly believe that by growing it, we’re growing our conference as a whole. Thank you for making a contribution towards helping us achieve that goal!