Foodrop wins Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in New Jersey’s 12th District
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman has named Arushi Gupta of West Windsor Plainsboro High School North and Anika Gupta of West Windsor Plainsboro High School North as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in New Jersey’s 12th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Foodrop, the students said, ”The inspiration for Foodrop comes from a personal anecdote. One day we finished eating dinner and it was around 9:30 pm. We then came out and decided to get donuts since Dunkin’ donuts were close by. We went inside and were shocked by the number of donuts left on the shelves: about 2/3 remaining. We weren’t worried at first but then after ordering our donuts, the employee told us I am going to throw these donuts out so you can take some more. This revealed a problem of food waste that we never had encountered before. On top of our personal experience, a few months ago a video on TikTok was circulating about an employee that was fired for exposing dunkin’ donuts food waste. Hence, we decided to make Foodrop.”
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.