Kotlin Ecosystem Mentorship Program Pilot: Celebrating Contributions and Announcing Winners

Program Overview

The Kotlin Ecosystem Mentorship Program (KEMP) pilot brought together experienced mentors and aspiring contributors to work on real Kotlin open-source projects. Over two months, four pairs successfully completed the program by making meaningful contributions to the community. As part of the initiative, one eligible pair was randomly selected to receive the grand prize: a trip to KotlinConf 2026 in Munich.

Kotlin Ecosystem Mentorship Program Pilot: Celebrating Contributions and Announcing Winners — Source: blog.jetbrains.com

The program received strong interest from the community, with 80 mentee applications and 29 mentor applications. From these, ten pairs were selected for the pilot, eight remained active midway, and four saw their projects through to completion. The success of this pilot has laid the foundation for continuing and expanding the program.

Learn more about the grand prize winners and the other successful pairs.

Grand Prize Winners

The grand prize winners are mentor Ruslan (yet300) and mentee Clare Kinery (kinerycl), who collaborated on the bitchat-android project.

Collaboration on BitChat

Ruslan and Clare focused on the Android client of BitChat, where Clare contributed UI and UX improvements that brought the Android experience closer to platform conventions. Her work enhanced overall polish and accessibility. Clare successfully submitted and merged two pull requests: PR #680 and PR #682. These improvements covered voice note styling, camera and audio controls, dark/light theme support, visual hierarchy, and press interaction feedback.

Mentor and Mentee Perspectives

Ruslan noted that Clare adapted quickly to the codebase and was able to work independently after the initial alignment phase. 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," Ruslan shared.

For Clare, the biggest takeaway was 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 Successful Pairs

In addition to the grand prize winners, three other pairs successfully completed the program, contributing across various parts of the Kotlin ecosystem, including Android UI, developer tooling, documentation, CI/CD, and multiplatform libraries.

Mohamed Rejeb and Kaustubh Deshpande – Calf

Kaustubh contributed across several areas of the Calf project, including dependency updates and CI/CD automation, helping streamline the project's maintenance and deployment.

Nikita Vaizin and Anshul Vyas – FlowMVI

Anshul fixed a bug in the FlowMVI metrics module and contributed to the migration guide, which assists developers in transitioning from MVVM to FlowMVI architecture.

Adetunji Dahunsi and Yu Jin – heron

Yu Jin worked on improvements related to input handling and developer-facing issues in the heron project, enhancing usability for other developers.

Community Impact and Feedback

The high number of applications—80 mentees and 29 mentors—signals strong community interest in mentorship-driven open-source contribution. The program lowered the barrier for first-time contributors and provided a structured path to making meaningful contributions. Many participants highlighted the value of guided collaboration and the confidence they gained.

The Kotlin Ecosystem Mentorship Program demonstrates how targeted mentorship can accelerate community growth and project sustainability. Contributions ranged from UI/UX polish to backend tooling, showing the breadth of skills that mentees brought and the diverse needs of Kotlin projects.

Future Plans

Given the success and positive feedback from the pilot, the organizers plan to continue the program. While details for the next iteration are still being finalized, the community can expect more opportunities to participate—either as mentors or mentees. For updates, consider joining the KEMP Slack channel (link placeholder) or following official announcements.

If you’re interested in contributing to Kotlin open-source projects but unsure where to start, keep an eye out for future mentorship cycles. Programs like KEMP provide the guidance and structure needed to make that first contribution less intimidating and more rewarding.