Meal Deals App Wins Rep. Moolenaar’s (MI-04) 2019 Congressional App Challenge

January 16, 2020

Rep. John Moolenaar has named four Breckenridge students as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s 4th district. Midland High School’s Corbin Fleming-Dittenber, Andrew Scheffer,Timmy Kipfmiller and Erika Leasher submitted Meal Deals, an app that helps low-income families and individuals buy ingredients for cheap, nutritious meals and find services to help provide upward mobility and prevent food insecurity

When asked why they were passionate about creating an app that helps fight food insecurity the students replied, “Over $161 billion worth of food in 2010 was wasted, and we hoped that we could help change that. We decided to research more on this idea. There are over 14 million U.S. households unsure of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of the household in 2018 we realized there is a serious need for saving on food costs in America.” 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.