Stress Less wins Rep. Mike Kelly’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s 16th District
Rep. Mike Kelly has named Brooke Lassinger from Knoch High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s 16th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Stress Less, the student said, “My app was created in order to assist those, like myself, who find themselves in severely stressful situations and are left confused on how to cope. High school is a difficult time period and many turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, merely to get through the day. Everyone deserves the opportunity to learn how to cope in a way beneficial to themselves to better their futures and thrive. I just hope my app allows the users to find a strategy to cope with stress and further their studies on themselves and self improvement.”
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.