Homisaf wins Rep. Lizzie Fletcher’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s Seventh District
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher has named Rebecca Bi from St. Agnes Academy as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s Seventh District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Homisaf, the student said, “My family was unfortunately subjected to a burglary a few years ago, and I wanted to make a free and easy to use app that could immediately notify the homeowner and capture images to send to the police. This promotes safety in one’s home, which is designed to be a safe space to relax without fear of invaders.”
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.