From the website of KWOC : Kharagpur Winter of Code is a 5-week long online programme for students who are new to open source software development. The programme not only helps students to get involved in open source, but also prepares them for many open source summer programmes; Google Summer of Code being one of them.
I came to know about this programme through friends, and decided to participate as I wanted to get more experience of contributing to open source projects;working in a group where several people are working at different parts in an organised manner;writing good code according to the guidelines.