Menti wins Rep. Chuy Garcia’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s Fourth District
Rep. Garcia has named Carlos Alcala, a 12th grader at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s Fourth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Menti, the student said, “The inspiration for this app comes from a personal experience I had with my friend. She struggles with severe depression and anxiety and, on one occasion, she forgot whether she had taken her medication. Assuming she had already taken it, she continued her day without it. When I met up with her she was on the brink of fainting. I had to call her parents, as she tried to communicate with me using hand signals where her medication was. This was a very stressful and overwhelming situation for all of us. Menti was created to try to prevent such emergencies from happening again by allowing people to keep track of their medications efficiently.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
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. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. 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 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2024, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.