The Perl Foundation is participating in Google's 2008 Summer of Code.

    http://code.google.com/soc/2008/

This means Google will give "successful student contributors a 4500 USD
stipend, enabling them to focus on their coding projects for three months."

"In order to participate in the program, you must be a student. [...]
enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but
not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs,
PhD programs and undergraduate programs"

There's a page of key information and suggested Perl-related projects at

    http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?gsoc2008_projects

Naturally I'm hoping to find someone interested in helping with
a DBI-specific project:

    http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?gsoc2008_projects#common_test_suite_for_dbi_and_drivers

but there are plenty of other interesting and useful projects.

Tim.