Outreachy 2024 - Success working on the Open Food Facts project
Tue, 25-Jun-2024 by
Stéphane Gigandet
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The Perl Foundation is taking part again this year in the [Outreachy](https://www.outreachy.org/) program which encourages the participation of underrepresented groups in open source. As Makoto Nozaki described in the previous post, we had many applicants this year, most of whom were new to Perl but very interested in learning the language. Out of many very motivated and enthusiastic candidates, we selected Success Ologunsua who will be working on the [Open Food Facts](https://world.openfoodfacts.org/) project.
Success’s introduction in her own words:
> "Hello everyone, my name is Success Ologunsua. I'm a microbiologist turned software engineer based in Lagos, Nigeria. I mostly write server-side code because I enjoy being involved in how things run behind the scenes.
> I am passionate about contributing to open-source projects and I'm currently contributing to a project in the OpenFoodFacts community. I joined this project because it addresses important social and health issues, such as weight management and diet monitoring, which resonate deeply with me. Also, I was drawn to the inclusivity of all languages in the project and the challenge of learning Perl, a language I find intriguing.
> My tech stack includes Node.js, Nest.js, JavaScript, TypeScript, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, HTML, CSS, and most recently, Perl 😍.
> Besides solving problems with various tools and technologies, I enjoy writing articles that explain technical topics. You can find some of my work at: https://medium.com/@TheSussex
> In my free time, I enjoy watching crime thriller series, swimming, and people-watching."*
This is the fifth year that The Perl Foundation is supporting the Open Food Facts project through the Outreachy program. Open Food Facts is a wikipedia for food products. Volunteers from all around the world gather data about food products (ingredients, allergens, nutrition facts, labels, packaging etc.) in a free, open and collaborative database that now contains more than 3 million products!
[
](https://world.openfoodfacts.org)
This year, Success will focus on the [producers platform](https://world.pro.openfoodfacts.org/) of Open Food Facts, continuing on the work of previous Outreachy interns Yukti Sharma and Monalika Patnaik. The platform enables big and small food manufacturers to share data and photos for their products on Open Food Facts, and to get free advice to improve the quality of their products (by comparing their products to similar products on the market, and by finding opportunities to get better nutritional scores by reducing sugars, saturated fats and salt).
Success’s mentors will be Alex Garel and Stéphane Gigandet.
Please join us in welcoming Monalika to the Perl’s community, and if you want to say “Hi!” to Monalika, you can join one of the weekly development calls for the Perl backend of Open Food Facts! (every Monday at 4pm CEST) or send a message at any time in the #productopener channel of the [Open Food Facts Slack](https://slack.openfoodfacts.org)!
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