Green Thumb wins Rep. Scott Perry’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s 10th District

Rep. Scott Perry has named Saketh Pochiraju of Mountain view Middle School, Bhargav Amarapalli of Mountain View Middle School, and Vishrut Igur of Monroe Township Middle School as the winners of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s 10th District.

When asked what inspired the creation of Green Thumb, the students said, “We noticed a problem in the community. While most people want to eat fresh organic fruits and vegetables, most often than not, they are busy and do not have the time, tools or the space to grow their own food. Some people grow too much, some grow too many of the same variety and others don’t know where to start. We thought an App could solve all these challenges and provide community members a safe, friendly and fun place to connect with others and trade, exchange their Produce.

It all started with our backyard garden. First, we did not know where to start, how to set up a garden, where to get the plants/seeds, what tools to use and once we started, we had too many tomatoes that our Moms made us eat everyday. Talking to other friends, neighbors and family, we realized, most people have the same problem. We thought sharing our learnings and the extra produce with others would be a great idea to solve this. We researched on this topic but did not find any app that could solve this so we took it as a challenge and developed an app. Our idea was to develop an online marketplace to connect producers with consumers and create a circular economy that will help protect Mother nature. Voila! we built the Green Thumb app!”

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.