My WPCredits Journey: What We’ve Built So Far

When we started WPCredits at Universidad Fidélitas, I knew it was an important project, but I didn’t fully grasp everything it would come to mean. Today, looking back, I realize that in a short time we’ve built something worth talking about. And since this is a journey that’s still very much open, I want to share it exactly as I’m living it.

From 158 to 185 students

We launched our first cohort with 158 students. That number already felt big to me, especially thinking about the logistics of supporting that many people well, making sure no one falls through the cracks. Today we’re 185 active students, spread across 6 schedules.

That split across schedules isn’t a minor detail. When you work with large groups, the temptation is to put everyone in the same space and run through the content all at once. We chose the opposite: dividing into six schedules precisely so we could offer close support, answer real questions, and make sure every student feels there’s someone paying attention to their progress. Contributing to WordPress for the first time can be intimidating, and that support is the difference between someone who stays and someone who drops out.

Five professors who joined as mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.

If I had to pick the thing I’m proudest of in this cohort, it isn’t the student numbers: it’s that we brought in 5 professors as mentors.

To me, this is key. It’s one thing to have motivated students learning to contribute, and quite another to have faculty fully involved in mentoring, guiding them step by step. These professors understand both sides of the coin: the dynamics of the classroom, with its timelines and academic demands, and the dynamics of the WordPress community, which runs on its own logic of contribution, collaboration, and open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL.. Having someone who can translate between those two worlds makes the student experience far more solid.

Why this program is so meaningful to me

Beyond the numbers, what truly moves me about WPCredits is seeing who we’re reaching. We are bringing new generations to WordPress.

I’m talking about students who, in many cases, had never heard of open source, who didn’t know that behind WordPress there’s a global community of people contributing their time and work openly. When they discover that they too can contribute in a real way—that their work gets recorded, that it becomes part of a project powering a huge portion of the web—something shifts in how they see themselves. They stop being mere users of technology and become people who build it. And along the way, they put together an authentic professional portfolio, with verifiable contributions that carry real weight in the job market.

Planting that seed in young people, opening that door for them, is what makes this program so much more than an institutional task for me.

The new step: WPCredits reaches high schools

And because the idea has always been to keep moving forward, we’ve taken a step that has me especially excited: together with @peiraisotta, we’ve launched a WPCredits pilot in high schools.

This pilot is part of the broader WPCredits initiative—an effort to explore how the program can reach beyond universities and open its doors to secondary education. Working alongside Isotta to bring this vision to life has been a real privilege, and it speaks to the program’s commitment to growing the community from the ground up.

The first school to join is the Liceo HHC Experimental Bilingüe José Figueres Ferrer in Cartago, Costa Rica. There, 13 tenth-grade students will begin this process as part of their Student Community Service requirement. I find this point especially valuable: instead of fulfilling their community service with a one-off, isolated activity, these young people will do it by contributing to an international project, with real and verifiable impact. Their community service becomes a formative, technical experience that connects them to a global community.

It’s the first time WPCredits reaches secondary education, and to me, it represents opening an entirely new door. These students are younger; they’re at a different stage, and seeing how they respond to this challenge is going to teach us a great deal.

Because that’s the other important point: this pilot isn’t a standalone event. It’s designed as a foundation, a model that can be replicated and improved so that, starting next year, more high schools can join the initiative. We’re beginning with one, with 13 students, but the program’s sights are set on something much bigger.

Moving forward

When I put all of this together—the growth of the cohort, the professors who joined as mentors, the new students arriving at WordPress, and now high schools entering the picture—it’s clear to me that we’re on the right path.

WPCredits, for me, turned out to be much more than a program: it’s a way of building community, of making room for new generations, and of showing that from Costa Rica we can contribute to a global project.

This is only the beginning. And we keep moving forward.

#education, #wpcredits