Impact wins Rep. Michelle Steel’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 48th District
Rep. Michelle Steel has named Joyce De Quiros, an 11th Grader at Newport Harbor High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 48th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Impact, the student said, ”As seen in the video, my current history class inspired me to create this app. Every day, my history teacher would take the first few minutes of class to ask the students about current events in our world. Most of the time, only the same few students would participate, or no one would take part at all. My history teacher explained to us how important it is to stay informed of current events because we will be the ones who will eventually lead society. Daunted by the lack of participation and my teacher’s lesson, I read the news at least once per day. I knew that this wasn’t enough, that being one of the few participants during that time in class would not change the fact that an overwhelming large number of students do not inform themselves of the news; instead of formulating their own opinions and stances regarding issues in the world, they listen to and agree with others’ opinions. That’s when I knew I needed to take action, so I used my programming skills to create an app that would benefit students and teens, as well as the world.”
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.