Travel stipends:

How they work:

For each additional hour (beyond the base 60) you work on your project for The Bay, $10 will be put towards your travel stipend. Once you reach 40 hours towards your travel stipend, you will have the opportunity to apply for additional case by case, need-based, travel stipends (intended for international folks). These additional stipends are also merit-based because we have a limited fund, but if you aren't given one, you can continue to work for more hours on your project (still at $10 per hour) until your stipend covers your flights!

What the need-based additional stipends look like:

As explained above, once you hit 40 hours past the base 60 hours (100 hours total), you will have the opportunity to apply for a need-based stipend. Here's what the application process will look like. When you apply, you will be prompted to answer some short answer questions. The goal of these questions is for us to get to know you a bit & gain a better understanding of why you are applying. After you submit the initial application, you will be invited to a quick chat.

A quick explanation on why we picked this system:

When deciding the format for travel stipends for this event, we wanted to come up with a very inclusive way to handle travel stipends. Our first iteration was to give everyone a $200 travel stipend and set the minimum hour requirement to 80 hours. Each additional hour would add $10 to your stipend. We didn't like how high the minimum threshold was, and with this model, we could not provide any meaningful need-based stipends, so we looked for another option. Our current model (explained above) seems a lot more inclusive and should give the opportunity to more people to receive stipends. Due to the way our funding works ($10 per hour of project time/learning), this is the most fair way we could think of that would allow anyone who wants to get a stipend. If you think you have a more fair idea, feel free to reach out to us at shipwrecked@hackclub.com!