The pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program is a 12-week training program taking place from the week of 22 September through the week of 15 December 2025.
Theme: Governance and documentation module
Based on the preferences that participants indicated in their application forms, the pilot cohort focuses on governance and documentation to support OS projects as they scale and consider best practices for sustainability.
Through a combination of five workshops, participant lightning talks, and a multi-week course, participants will develop practical skills in giving and receiving feedback, decision-making frameworks, volunteer management, and the creation of documentation to support participation and collaboration such as contributor guides or team playbooks.
Subject to funding availability, we may design future Birdaro training program modules on additional topics such as community engagement (also highly requested!), project management, and project homes/fiscal structures. If this happens, there would be another open application period for each module. Completing one module does not preclude participation in any future modules.
Program participants
The pilot cohort consists of 22 open-source projects which focus on open-source software, hardware and/or data. To maximize the impact of the program, the majority of projects have multiple team members participating in the program for a total of 61 program participants.
Additionally, several additional projects will participate in the multi-week course at the end of the program only.
Pilot module components
For more information about each module component, please visit the Governance and documentation module page.
Program kick-off and curated networking session (Wednesday, 24 September 2025)
An introduction to the program, including a live demo of Canvas learning management system (30 mins)
A curated networking session where participants will be paired with others in rotation based on the interests and challenges they shared during program registration (1 hour)
Mini-workshops (Wednesdays for 5 weeks beginning 1 October 2025)
5 Mini-workshops will cover topics including giving and receiving feedback, working with volunteers and community governance models
Workshops for this cohort are:
- Workshop 1: Giving and receiving feedback
- Workshop 2: Making collective decisions
- Workshop 3: Community governance structures
- Workshop 4: Designing for collaborative activities
- Workshop 5: Working with volunteers
Lightning talks (Thursdays for 5 weeks beginning 2 October 2025)
5 lightning talk sessions, each themed around a different topic, will give each team the opportunity to share their expertise and build deeper connections with other participants interested in similar topics
Session topics for this cohort are:
- Session 1: Successfully scaling team work
- Session 2: Using events to scale project contributions
- Session 3: Supporting community member contributions via mentoring, scaffolding, and feedback
- Session 4: Scaling community participation across your ecosystem – governance, time zones, multi-lingual materials, and more
- Session 5: Organizational governance and identifying structures and processes to support open-source projects
Multi-week course: Creating documentation to support participation and collaboration a.k.a. Creating Community Playbooks (Mondays and Thursdays beginning 3 November until 18 December 2025)
This six-week course will support participants in auditing existing documentation and creating a playbook or contributor guide to support their work as it scales.
Based on consultation with all shortlisted participants to negotiate times for the trainings, 11am ET (8am PT, 4pm UK*, 5pm CET*) emerged as the preferred time for the majority.
*Please note that a daylight savings time shift during the program will affect the precise timing of training sessions, depending on where you are based (the UK and Europe shift on 26 October and the US shifts on 2 November 2025).
Attendance requirements
At least one member of each project team is required to attend each of the scheduled sessions. The Birdaro program is designed so that there is some flexibility to choose which team members attend which sessions. However, consistent attendance by at least one member is strongly recommended for the Creating Community Playbooks multi-week training course.
Digital badges
CSCCE awards digital badges to all graduates of our trainings. At the end of the Birdaro training program, individual participants will be eligible to receive up to two digital badges, depending on the components completed.
- Birdaro training program badges will be awarded to all members of a project team, provided the team as a whole has completed the program requirements. At least one team member needs to attend each of the program activities (i.e., the kick-off and networking event, all five Mini-workshops, all five Lightning talk sessions, and the majority of sessions of the PBK course) and the team must submit all required homework assignments.
- PBK badges will be awarded to individual participants who complete the PBK course by attending 80% of the live sessions and submitting a final assignment. PBK badges will not be awarded on a team-wide basis.
Funding for this cohort – and future opportunities
This pilot module is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. If you are interested in funding a future module – either on the same topic or additional topics, please email info@biradro.org
