No Narcotics wins Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Arizona’s Second District
Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick has named Avaya Agarwal of BASIS Oro Valley and Suhaani Sodhi of BASIS Oro Valley as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Arizona’s Second District.
When asked what inspired the creation of No Narcotics, the students said, “With the ongoing opioid crisis, we were inspired to make a change by spreading awareness of harmful drugs, especially when abused with a given prescription. On the news, we hear about fentanyl pills being disguised as candy, and even the smallest exposure to this narcotic can hospitalize and even kill someone. Not only that, but drug overdoses are prevalent in society today, with them being a leading cause of death. This scares us because so many teenagers of our age are involved with substance abuse, and that could lead to an overdose at any time. Many youths don’t know the possible repercussions and this is often detrimental. By spreading the word, we hope we can contribute to ending this trend.”
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.