Over at PHPWomen they have launched a new initiative to encourage (Open Source) projects that embrace diversity, and provide a welcoming and friendly atmosphere for contributors. They want to put projects with these characteristics in the spotlight by partnering with them, and helping them to further identify needs to make the atmosphere even better. Their definition of diversity is based on gender, race, religion, age or background.

The most important thing if you want to partner with them your open source project needs to inform visitors of how they embrace diversity by either placing a Statement of Diversity on the projects’ site. You can also choose to otherwise make clear that everyone is welcome, regardless of their diversity. In short, you need to convince the PHPWomen staff that they should associate their name with your project.

So far there are seven partners: Spaz, Habari (fellow php|architect blogger Carl Anderson made a post about this project recently), Phergie, PHP-GTK, PHP Documentation Team, Lithium (also checkout what Marco Tabini wrote about Lithium), FUDForum. If you want to join a friendly and open community, join any of these projects. If you have your own and you think you could do better, or are already doing great, join the PHPWomen OS partnership program. After all you get the best quality and most innovation in free and supportive environments.