OurMind wins Rep. Jodey Arrington’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 19th District
Rep. Jodey Arrington has named Alondra Correa Velderrain, a 12th Grader at Wylie High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 19th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of OurMind, the student said, ”Individuals do not know much about the brain unless one is interested in the medical field and specialize in the brain. There are so many things individuals don’t know that occurs within our brains and we keep discovering new things about it every single day which I find fascinating. Mental health is also something very important to me, so within this app, I also included articles that I believe makes one more informed about mental illness, its causes, and what we can actively do in order to be become better every single day. I also tried to apply animations in order to entertain the user. I also made more research about human behavior because I naturally find it interesting, it is organic to be curious about behaviors, so I also added articles in order to inform others!”
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.