Carbon Counter wins Rep. Mike Thompson’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s Fifth District
Rep. Mike Thompson has named Olivia Pettit of Benicia High School and Elizabeth Beauparlant of Benicia High School as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s Fifth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Carbon Counter, the students said, ”Sometimes as teens we can feel powerless in our position as we watch the world around us crumble, and it can be scary to be told that the future depends on us. This game is a chance for us to try, and do our part as best we can to educate others, and even ourselves. It’s not just us, but the next generation who will also face these problems, and we see this as an opportunity to teach them that the little things matter, and they don’t need big gestures to do their part, but small, meaningful changes in their everyday life. We were inspired by the effects that climate change is having on our world, and because of its increasing importance, if we were going to make an app, it would not only need to be relevant, but truly informative to all audiences.”
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.