act1on 4 chang3 wins Rep. Dean Phillips’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Minnesota’s Third District
Rep. Phillips has named Ananya Murugavel, a 10th grader at Eagle Ridge Academy, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Minnesota’s Third District.
When asked what inspired the creation of act1on 4 chang3, the student said, “A big inspiration in not only this project, but in my life in general are the people around me. A lot of my friends had started volunteering for their college applications and seeing that they had, I started as well. While I was volunteering, I had slowly fallen in love with helping others and volunteered more. This is also an added bonus to my college application. While my mother and I were calculating my total volunteer hours, she had complained about how hard it was to keep track of everything. That was the moment that I had gained this idea to make a volunteer tracker. Later in the month, I asked my friends if they had a similar problem to mine. They agreed and reiterated how hard it was to store hours and keep track of them. This had inspired me to make an app that made not only my life easier, but also everyone’s life who had a similar problem to me as well. When I found out about this app challenge, I thought it was the perfect time to make this idea of a volunteer tracker come to life.”
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.