The Rust Foundation has announced the first recipients of awards for the inaugural Community Grants Program. The list includes 20 individuals selected as Rust Foundation Fellows, and 20 stand-alone project grants targeting specific work in the Rust ecosystem.

The Rust Foundation Community Grants Program is a mechanism to provide funds to the Rust development community to support their work. Rust is experiencing fast and widespread adoption, and the financial support to maintainers that this Program will provide, will focus on impactful and sustainable work that best demonstrates the remarkable capabilities of Rust.

The Rust Fellowship award recognises long term contributors to the Rust Project, as well as newer ‘Associate Fellow’ entrants to the maintainer community looking to increase their contributions and skills in order to develop into the Rust leaders of the future. Rust Fellows are sponsored for one year to work on key priority Rust development. Alongside a monthly stipend to support the time they devote to Rust maintenance, Fellows will also receive a program of training, networking, and the opportunity to attend Rust-related events.

Fellows and Project grant recipients will be working across the Rust ecosystem, with several focusing on compiler maintenance and improvement work, documentation, libraries, learning materials and const-generics.

2022 Associate Fellow Waffle Lapkin will be working on making it easier to learn and use Rust over the course of the next 12 months through diagnostic improvements to the already robust Rust compiler, and through contributions to the standard library.