Bismillah wins Rep. Darin LaHood’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s 18th District
Rep. Darin LaHood has named Wardiyah Rammazy, a 12th Grader at Daarul Uloom Islamic School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s 18th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Bismillah, the student said, ”After taking part in a coding summer camp, I realized that I could use coding for good, not just to have fun. Since I am a Muslim myself, I know a lot of the struggles other Muslims and those assumed to be Muslim may face. Islamophobia is an issue that is very close to my heart. I also know how scary it can be walking around with a headscarf because you never know if someone will randomly commit a hate crime towards you on the street. All these things inspired me to code an app raising awareness about Islamophobia. Since representation in the media plays a large role in how Muslims are perceived, I focused on advocating for better representation and highlighting Muslim creators, artists, business owners, and more.”
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.