WeRecycle wins Rep. Mike Quigley’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s Fifth District
Rep. Mike Quigley has named Teddy Lampert, a Ninth Grader at Latin School of Chicago, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s Fifth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of WeRecycle, the student said, ”I created WeRecycle because I believe it’s essential for everyone to understand the importance of taking care of our environment. My goal with the app is to promote good habits of sustainability in the next generation.
I also know that learning about climate change can be difficult for kids. It’s a subject that is constantly evolving and it includes statistics and predictions for the future that may be daunting or overwhelming for kids. WeRecycle’s content and format is designed with this in mind. Each slide has one point that is as simple and as easy to understand as possible, and all of the content is divided into four manageable and specific lessons/modules.
I also believe that this format is good for teaching anything online, not just recycling. Having interactivity and games at the end of each lesson gives people a fun way to test their knowledge or catch up on anything they missed throughout the module.”
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
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, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.