Cleaner Together wins Rep. Jake Ellzey’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s Sixth District
Rep. Jake Ellzey has named Eshan Singhal from The Oakridge School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s Sixth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Cleaner Together, the student said, “Ever since learning about the effects of global warming in my 3rd grade science class, I have been fascinated by the subject of environmental pollution and dedicated to ending the problem for future generations. As I came to learn more about the topic, I found out that recycling is not as simple as I initially thought because recycling centers will only accept certain items and all centers have different guidelines. Additionally, due to this environmental enthusiasm, I wanted to create a non profit dedicated specifically towards cleaning the Earth of waste and an app relating to the organization seemed very relevant and necessary.”
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.