VolunHour wins Rep. George Santos’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s Third District
Rep. Santos has named Richard Xu, an 11th Grader at William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s Third District.
When asked what inspired the creation of VolunHour, the student said, “As a high school student, I am passionate about volunteering and giving back to my community. I started a volunteer organization with my friends, participating in environmental stewardship activities at various parks. Our organization grew from 5 members to over 30 volunteers within three months. However, I soon realized that managing and keeping track of volunteer hours was a tedious and time-consuming task. We were using spreadsheets and manual record-keeping, which made it difficult to keep track of everyone’s hours and contributions. Using spreadsheets was very inefficient and could easily get messy. I knew there had to be a better way, so I set out to create a solution. That’s when I came up with the idea for VolunHour. I wanted to create an app that would simplify the process of tracking volunteer hours.
With VolunHour, volunteers can easily log their hours by scanning a QR code, and organizations can effortlessly create and manage events. The app is user-friendly and offers an efficient solution to a common problem in the volunteer world.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
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. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. 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 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2024, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.