One Connected wins Rep. Salud Carbajal’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 24th District

Rep. Salud Carbajal has named Christian Sanchez of Santa Barbara Senior High School and Antonio Ayala of Santa Barbara Senior High School as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 24th District.

When asked what inspired the creation of One Connected, the students said, ”Previous school years consisted of emails not being read by the full student body. “Club rush” was the only opportunity for students to hear about clubs and sign up in-person. Not being able to easily join clubs and communicate within them made it difficult for connections to be formed. This school year, it all changes. Students will no longer struggle to communicate between themselves and other clubs/organizations. That is exactly why One Connected was created: to break the communication barrier and be connected as one.”

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.