Finana Wins Rep. Walden’s (OR-02) 2019 Congressional App Challenge
Rep. Greg Walden has named four Hermiston students as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Oregon’s 2nd district. Hermiston High School’s Rogelio Lemus, Laine Whelan, Adamaryz Lopez Navarrete and John Fitzgerald submitted Finna, an app that allows many non profit organizations to manage their fundraising.
When asked why they were passionate about creating a math app the student replied,“One of the teammates, Rogelio, was planning to create a website for his church’s coffee stand. This website would get rid of the tedious paperwork currently involved in the function of the business. That was the base of the idea for our project that we transformed for an allowance of a multitude of items instead of a set list.” 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.