Smart Finance wins Rep. Stephen Lynch’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Massachusetts’s Eighth District
Rep. Stephen Lynch has named Pranav Addanki from Canton High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Massachusetts’s Eighth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Smart Finance, the student said, “I was inspired to create a financial planner, as financial planning is seldom taught to young adults. The art of keeping a clear budget benefits them, because they can know what they can spend and are able to stay away from unknowingly falling into debt. Making smart financial decisions with a comprehensive financial planner like my app in the present can prevent financial trouble in the future. Smart investments and decisions with money will turn a dollar saved now into multiple dollars later on.
I decided to take action and make an app that could serve as a guide throughout life’s journey, allowing people to be in control of their income, expenses, and investments, so that they can manage money effectively. Financial uncertainty induced by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has made it much more important to review finances, create budgets, plan investments, and more to achieve short and long term financial goals, especially in times of hardship.”
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.
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, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.
The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.