Draftly wins Rep. Donald Norcross’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in New Jersey’s First District
Rep. Donald Norcross has named David Watts and Patrick Oberholzer of Haddonfield Memorial High School as the winners of the 2025 Congressional App Challenge in New Jersey’s First District. Their app Draftly integrates text editing and illustrative editing into the same document context with a scanner, many documents, panning and zooming, and more powerful features.
When asked what inspired the creation of Draftly, the students said, “We were inspired to create this app by the frequent phenomenon of having or wanting to take on-paper notes but then struggling to organize or find them later, or wanting the flexibility of digital editing after the fact. Draftly aims to solve this problem by providing a place to digitize and integrate your physical notes with your digital notes.”
The 2025 Congressional App Challenge marked another record-setting year for the program. A total of 394 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives hosted App Challenges in their congressional districts, the highest level of participation in the program’s history. More than 13,800 students from across the country participated, submitting over 4,600 original apps focused on real-world challenges ranging from health and accessibility to education, sustainability, and civic engagement.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives that encourages middle school and high school students to learn to code, explore computer science, and build practical technology solutions for their communities. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and winning teams are invited to showcase their projects to Members of Congress, staff, and industry leaders at the annual #HouseOfCode celebration on Capitol Hill.
The Challenge is proudly bipartisan and reflects a shared commitment to expanding access to STEM education and preparing the next generation of American innovators for the future workforce. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from the Broadcom Foundation, AWS, Infosys Foundation USA, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2026 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.