Recycle Pro wins Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Delaware’s At-Large District
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester has named Irwin Wang of Cab Calloway School of the Arts and Maya Perry of Cab Calloway School of the Arts as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Delaware’s At-Large District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Recycle Pro, the students said, ”We were inspired to create this app because we feel that the world’s current environmental issues are too severe not to take action. In my own experience, I had tried to recycle stuff in the past but was confused by the vast and conflicting online information and wasn’t sure if I was doing it correctly. For this reason, I wanted to make a digital resource readily available and clear to understand that teaches you the ins and outs of recycling and environmental clean-up. Another thing that motivated us, especially as high school students, was generating volunteering opportunities/community outreach. Many people don’t have access to or don’t know where or how to help their community. We hoped to create a free space where everyone could organize, join, and share. Our app has the potential to increase the volume of volunteers as well as foster environmental stewardship.”
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.