Addvent wins Rep. Adam Schiff’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 28th District
Rep. Adam Schiff has named Liam Peak, a 12th Grader at John Burroughs High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 28th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Addvent, the student said, ”I’m sure everybody, including me, has been told to be more organized and to set goals within a clear timeline or date. Now instead of buying a planner or writing all my goals down on paper, I could simply install a free easy-to-use app that I could quickly open on my computer at any time. I wanted to create an app that would encourage its users to create goals that are meant to benefit themselves and others around them. Although there are many calendar apps available on every device, I was never able to find one that encouraged me to create goals for myself or my community. I wanted to use an app that functioned similarly to a normal calendar app, but also kept track of my progress and rewarded me with satisfaction after completing my goals. So, I created Addvent for others to become a better version of themselves and to become role models for their community in a way that was easy and fun to do.”
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.