360 ReSet wins Rep. Jahana Hayes’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Connecticut’s Fifth District
Rep. Jahana Hayes has named Rifat Tarafder from Academy of Science and Innovation as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Connecticut’s Fifth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of 360 ReSet, the student said, “I created this app in a time where I was struggling with my own mental health. I figured that if I was struggling, there were other people going through the same thing. Prior to creating my app, I used other mindfulness apps. Many of the features of those apps were locked behind paywalls. I felt that those resources should be accessible for everyone. I was inspired by my former school’s principal to take action and build something that would not only benefit me, but benefit my community. I created this app as a passion project, and I hope it has a wider reach in order to help more people, especially students.”
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official 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. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.
The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.