One of the most important aspects of any open source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. community is mentorship. In many ways, WordPress is what it is today due in large part to the many established contributors who have been willing to help others find their place within the project.

The WordPress Campus Connect and WordPress Credits Programs are important variables in the equation for WordPress to remain strong for another 20+ years. This is an explicit and organized mentorship program 

While we should be welcoming to everyone who shows up in our community spaces, it’s critically important that the participants of these programs are celebrated, recognized, and most importantly, adequately supported by experienced contributors when they show up to participate. Novice contributors often need a bit of extra guidance as they learn to participate while following the expectations of the community. 

However, it can be hard to know who is participating in these programs without asking directly.

To help everyone in the WordPress community better support, welcome, and embrace the participants of these programs, I’m proposing that a designation be added to their wordpress.org profiles. It could be a badge, but I also envision something more obvious than that. This is a very quick mock up of a possible option I came up with.

I’d also like to propose that each participant’s mentor Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. or program facilitator be listed on their profiles. This is something the Drupal project has done for over a decade that I think we should borrow.

It’s a great way not only to recognize the amazing mentors within the project, but it also shines a light on each person’s unique contributor journey. It can also provide a path for other contributors to share feedback indirectly with someone’s mentor to discuss with them during their time through the educational programs.

For now, I think it makes sense to limit this to only participants of these programs. But in the future it could be opened to all WordPress.org users provided there is a standardized way to approve or confirm these relationships, and an established minimum threshold for what is considered a mentorship (reviewing someone’s patch twice is not necessarily active mentorship).