A scholarship is supposed to do more than cover a flight. Here’s what the first round of Open Horizons recipients have done since they came home from WordCamp US 2025.
When we launched the Open Horizons Scholarship in May 2025, the goal was simple: help WordPress contributors get to the events that would otherwise be out of reach..
Six recipients made it to WordCamp US 2025 in Portland – coming from Malaysia, Guatemala, India, Costa Rica, and across the United States. Several months later, we took a look at what they’ve been contributing to the WordPress project since the conference.
The short version: a lot.
Here’s the long version.
Mainul Kabir Aion 
Organizer · @aion11
Mainul has stayed remarkably busy since WCUS. He’s been mentoring organizers at WordCamp Barishal in Bangladesh, wrote a post for the WordCamp Asia 2026 site, kept up with users in the plugin support forums, and shipped multiple plugin releases through the WordPress SVN repository. (He commits regularly enough that “regularly” probably undersells it.)
Frank Calderon 
Volunteer · @fgcalderon
Frank came back from WCUS and went all-in on the Central American WordPress community. He organized and spoke at WordCamp Guatemala 2025, attended WordCamp San José 2025, was confirmed as a speaker for WordPress Developer Day 2026 San José, and joined the organizing team for Women WordPress Day Guatemala 2026.
If you’re keeping score: that’s four events Frank has shown up for, in the year since one event helped him show up.
Bigul Malayi 
Volunteer · @mbigul
Bigul has contributed across just about every WordPress project that takes contributions. He joined the Photos team at WordCamp Asia 2026 Contributor Day, has been steady on translate.wordpress.org (dozens of strings translated and reviewed in recent weeks), and has uploaded 3,187 photos to the WordPress Photo Directory.
Yes, three thousand one hundred and eighty-seven. We checked twice.
Kinjal Dalwadi
Volunteer · @kinjaldalwadi
Kinjal has kept up consistent translation work on translate.wordpress.org in the months since WCUS; suggesting, translating, and reviewing strings on an ongoing basis, with her most recent activity just days before we wrote this post.
It’s the kind of quiet, steady contribution that makes WordPress usable in dozens of languages, and it’s exactly the long-term commitment we hoped to see.
Kelly Choyce-Dwan 
Organizer · @ryelle
Kelly’s contributions span Core, Gutenberg, and community infrastructure all at once. Since WCUS, she has authored the Call for Organizers post for WordCamp US 2026 in Phoenix, merged pull requests into both Gutenberg and the wporg-repo-tools repo, contributed to the WordPress 6.9 About page, and closed related Core Trac tickets along the way.
In other words, the kind of contributor whose name you see in a lot of changelogs.
Elineth Morera Campos 
Speaker · @emorera
Elineth has been turning her WCUS experience into a pipeline for new WordPress contributors. She completed the WordPress Credits Mentor’s Course on learn.wordpress.org, made WordPress contribution a required module in her curriculum at Fidélitas University, mentors students through the work, organized WordPress Campus Connect San José 2025, and contributed photos to the WordPress Photo Directory.
She effectively built a feeder system for the next wave of WordPress contributors.
What this tells us
A few things stand out.
Recipients keep contributing. Every WCUS 2025 recipient is still actively involved in the WordPress project, not as a thank-you, but because contributing is what they enjoy doing. The scholarship just removed the barrier to one specific event.
Impact compounds. Almost every recipient has helped other people contribute since WCUS; by mentoring, organizing local events, teaching students, supporting forum users, or making contribution easier through tooling. The dollars don’t stop with one trip.
Geography matters. Recipients came from countries you don’t always see well-represented at flagships, and the work they’re doing now is grounded in their local communities. That’s the whole point.
The first cohort isn’t the only cohort
We’ve also funded recipients for WordCamp Asia 2026 and WordCamp Europe 2026, and we’ll share their post-event contributions in future updates.
In the meantime: if you’re an active WordPress contributor with a confirmed role at an upcoming flagship WordCamp as an organizer or speaker, we’d love to read your application.
Learn more and apply: https://wordpressfoundation.org/open-horizons-scholarship/
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