Habit Master wins Rep. Brad Wenstrup’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Ohio’s Second District

Rep. Brad Wenstrup has named Kaavya Tatavarty from Seven Hills School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Ohio’s Second District.

 

When asked what inspired the creation of Habit Master, the student said, “ One inspiration for the app was to create something for veterans to help them take charge of their lives after returning from service. I researched difficulties in veterans’ lives and discovered that they have many things to keep track of to regain everyday civilian life, such as medications, mental health, job searches, and so much more! I realized that many of them must have problems keeping themselves motivated, organized, developing new skills, and transforming their lives.
         

Another motivation was that many people started to rethink their priorities during the pandemic and took up new goals. Eating healthy, working out, yoga, meditation, and many other activities became popular on social media. Unfortunately, even with more time available, people still struggle to achieve their goals. I had tried to take up goals such as working out and studying every day, only to realize that I was forgetting or procrastinating. These two motivations inspired me to create an app to help all types of people change their lives and form habits to make them feel good about themselves.”

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.