Erf wins Rep. Jerry L. Carl’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Alabama’s First District
Rep. Jerry L. Carl has named Larom Segev from UMS-Wright Preparatory School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Alabama’s First District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Erf, the student said, “As a naturally organized person, I noticed that different events were often posted in different places, making it very difficult to have a neat list of everything occurring in the community. The last few years have also been ones in which I have felt disconnected from my peers and community due to remote learning. So I created an app that solves both problems by consolidating events in a community onto one easy-to-navigate app that allows for people to be aware of ways they can get involved, help out, and have fun in their community.”
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.