The FreeCAD project asso­ci­a­tion (FPA) is offer­ing trav­el grants to help FreeCAD devel­op­ers and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers attend FOSDEM 2023 in Brus­sels, Bel­gium. In addi­tion to the offi­cial FOSDEM events on Feb­ru­ary 4^th and 5^th, we will be orga­niz­ing a ded­i­cat­ed FreeCAD meet­ing day on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 3^rd. Grants are intend­ed to help cov­er trav­el expens­es and will be award­ed based on the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

The Pro­gram

• The FPA seeks to pro­vide finan­cial assis­tance to FreeCAD com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers trav­el­ing to FOSDEM.
• The FPA will issue grants up to a max­i­mum of USD 500 per per­son and will spend a max­i­mum of USD 5000 in total.
• The grant amount is USD 500 or the price of your trav­el, whichev­er is lower.

Who is Eligible

• Any per­son list­ed under “The team” on the FreeCAD forum is eli­gi­ble automatically.
• Any per­son with an approved FreeCAD-relat­ed talk at FOSDEM is eli­gi­ble automatically.
• Any oth­er FreeCAD com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber not fit­ting in the above cat­e­gories may apply for a grant, but only can­di­dates with sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to FreeCAD will be con­sid­ered by the FPA. FPA mem­bers will decide upon each case indi­vid­u­al­ly based on cri­te­ria includ­ing vol­ume of code con­tri­bu­tions as well as dura­tion and extent of com­mu­ni­ty participation.
• Grants will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Any per­son inter­est­ed must request a grant: no grant will be award­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly. All requests will be con­sid­ered and must be approved by the FPA.
• Requests must be sub­mit­ted by send­ing an email to the FPA at fpa@freecad.org no lat­er than Decem­ber 31^st, 2022.

How can the mon­ey be used?

• The grant must be sole­ly used for trav­el to and from Brus­sels for FOSDEM.
• Can­di­dates must sub­mit proof of trav­el expens­es to the FPA (e.g. a train or plane tick­et) in order to obtain a grant.
• If trav­el by train is avail­able„ train should be used prefer­ably instead of plane. The FPA will delib­er­ate over cas­es that don’t fol­low this guideline.

When do I get the mon­ey?
It might take some time to process pay­ments. We will do our best to process pay­ments as quick­ly as pos­si­ble but grant recip­i­ents will pay for their tick­et upfront and receive reim­burse­ment.

How to help
Even if you can’t attend, you can help some­one else go. Any dona­tion to the FPA received up to Feb­ru­ary 3^rd, 2023, and labeled or oth­er­wise com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the FPA as “FOSDEM trav­el” will increase the total max­i­mum amount to be spent com­men­su­rate­ly.

Final­ly, as mon­ey is lim­it­ed and this is the first time such action is orga­nized, we ask poten­tial appli­cants to be con­scious of oth­ers’ finan­cial need, and leave as much as pos­si­ble the mon­ey for those who most need it.

We look for­ward to meet­ing you in Brussels!