Education News

Kotlin Ecosystem Mentorship Program: Results and Winners

In the Kotlin Ecosystem Mentorship Program pilot, mentors and mentees worked together on real Kotlin open-source projects to make their first meaningful community contribution. Four pairs successfully completed the two-month program, and one eligible pair was randomly selected in the prize drawing to receive the grand prize – a trip to KotlinConf 2026 in Munich!

Congratulations to the winners:

• Mentor: Ruslan (yet300)
• Mentee: Clare Kinery (kinerycl)
• Project: bitchat-android

Ruslan’s and Clare’s collaboration focused on the Android client of BitChat, where Clare contributed UI and UX improvements that brought the Android experience closer to platform conventions and enhanced overall polish and accessibility.

Clare submitted and merged two pull requests: PR #680 and PR #682. Her work improved BitChat’s voice note styling, camera and audio controls, dark/light theme support, visual hierarchy, and press interaction feedback.

Ruslan shared that Clare adapted quickly to the codebase and was able to work independently after the initial alignment. Their collaboration started with a kickoff call and continued asynchronously through chat and GitHub.

“Clare demonstrated strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and a solid understanding of UI/UX principles”, said Ruslan.

For Clare, the biggest takeaway was not just the code itself, but understanding the realities of open-source collaboration.

“As a developer who had never contributed to open source before, the biggest thing I learned was how open-source collaboration actually works. This program made it feel approachable and far less intimidating than I ever expected. I genuinely don’t think I would have taken that leap without it”, she commented.

Other participants

We received 80 mentee applications and 29 mentor applications – a clear sign of strong community interest in this kind of initiative, so we plan to continue the program.

For this pilot, we selected ten pairs. Eight remained active through the middle of the program, and four completed it successfully. These successful pairs contributed across different parts of the Kotlin ecosystem and Kotlin-related projects, including the Android UI, developer tooling, documentation, CI/CD, and multiplatform libraries.

We also want to recognize the other pairs who successfully completed the program:

Mentor: Mohamed Rejeb

Mentee: Kaustubh Deshpande

Project: Calf

Kaustubh contributed across several areas of the project, including dependency updates and CI/CD automation.

Mentor: Nikita Vaizin

Mentee: Anshul Vyas

Project: FlowMVI

Anshul fixed a bug in the metrics module and contributed to the migration guide that helps developers move from MVVM to FlowMVI.

Mentor: Adetunji Dahunsi

Mentee: Yu Jin

Project: heron

Yu Jin worked on improvements related to input handling and developer-facing issues, with a focus on making the project easier to use and maintain.

What we learned

Here are a few valuable takeaways from the participants’ feedback:

• Clear task scoping matters. Start with work that is concrete, manageable, and reviewable within the program timeline.
• Asynchronous mentorship can work well, but only when expectations are explicit, and collaborators align early on communication style, task size, and review cycles.
• The program creates value on both sides. Mentees gain confidence, workflow knowledge, and real experience. Mentors get fresh contributions, a chance to improve onboarding in their own projects, and a reminder that open source becomes healthier when maintainers make room for new contributors.

Thank you to all mentors and mentees who joined the first Kotlin Ecosystem Mentorship cohort! We’re especially grateful to the maintainers who opened their projects to newcomers and invested time in guidance, reviews, and support.

Congratulations again to Ruslan and Clare, who were selected in the KotlinConf trip prize drawing, and to all four pairs who successfully completed the program.

To stay updated on future programs, join the KEMP Slack channel. See you there!