Progress In Congress wins Rep. Sean Maloney’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s 18th District
Rep. Sean Maloney has named Joseph Marra of John Jay Senior High School, Anish Anne of John Jay Senior High School, Nash Pillai of John Jay Senior High School, and Rahim Sow of John Jay High School as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s 18th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Progress In Congress, the students said, ”We live in the mid-Hudson Valley, a bright purple region of the country. Obviously, most kids in our high school are not old enough to vote, but we are interested in the political process. It seems like every possible political perspective can be heard in the parking lot, the hallways, the cafeteria, and on the ball fields. We know that our peers have come a long way since watching the animated short film “I’m Just a Bill” in fifth grade. As a diverse group of friends, we also realize that many of our peers are just cheering for their parent’s team during election season, and when the vote is over, they will disengage until the next election. One of the problems is that it is hard to focus on the important things through an attention economy that thrives on salacious headlines but is often lacking details that matter. Our teachers have taught us that if you want to get past the clickbait, you should go to the source documents.”
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
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, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.