MapShot Wins Rep. Blunt Rochester’s (DE-00) 2019 Congressional App Challenge
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester has named two Hockessin students as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Delaware. Cab Calloway School of the Arts’s Daniel Lee and Atharva Shanbhag submitted MapShot, an app which allows users to locate local gun reports.
When asked why they were passionate about creating an app that promotes safety the students replied,“ Our team wanted to do the challenge, and decided to make an app that tries to decrease the spread of gun violence in our community. We wanted to create an app that was simple and sleek, and easy to use by every age. ” They hope to encourage other students to better their communities by using their computer science skills.
Over 10,000 students registered for the 2019 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 2,177 functioning apps, marking the end of the most successful Congressional App Challenge to date. All told, 304 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 48 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, D.C.
The CAC is an 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. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental staffing and support. In the five years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1134 App Challenges across 48 states. Thousands of functional apps have been created by over 25,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.