Quick Save Wins Rep. Lauren Underwood’s (IL-14) 2019 Congressional App Challenge
Rep. Lauren Underwood has named two Naperville students as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s 14th district. Neuqua Valley High School’s Rahul Koul and Ibrahim Islam submitted QuickSave, an app that improves the response time for a police/school resource officer to research victims in emergency situations.
When asked why they were passionate about creating a safety app the students replied, “When the Parkland school shooting occurred, safety rose as the number one concern among students. In addition, our school received a bomb threat last year. We and our classmates were terrified; we clearly remember the pits in our stomachs as we waited for further information.” 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.