Santa Barbara Volunteer Opportunities Wins Rep. Carbajal’s (CA-24) 2019 Congressional App Challenge

Rep. Salud Carbajal’s has named two Montecito students as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in California’s 24th district. Providence School’s Sydney Whitehead and Ruby Kilpper submitted Santa Barbara Volunteer Opportunities, an app that allows for local volunteers to find service opportunities in a fast and effective way.

When asked why they were passionate about creating an app that focuses on locating volunteer opportunities the students replied, “We have found that it can be difficult for high school students to find volunteer opportunities that are fun, interesting and beneficial to the community. We wanted to make an app that clearly displayed all information needed for a volunteer to properly do their service work.” They hope to encourage other students to better their communities by using their computer science skills.  

Over 10,000 students registered for the 2019 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 2,177 functioning apps, marking the end of the most successful Congressional App Challenge to date. All told, 304 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 48 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, D.C.

The CAC is an initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental staffing and support. In the five years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1134 App Challenges across 48 states. Thousands of functional apps have been created by over 25,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.