Facebook is helping to power the Congressional App Challenge!

The Congressional App Challenge is excited to announce our newest sponsor, Facebook! We welcome Facebook onboard as a supporter of the App Challenge as they aid our mission to ensure every student in America has the opportunity to spark their passion for STEM. This year, the Congressional App Challenge will be our biggest Challenge yet, with over 295 Members of Congress participating in the program.  

We look forward to sharing our mission of promoting student diversity in STEM with Facebook, who have been leaders in this space for many years. At the college level, Facebook has made a five year commitment to the STEM Scholars Program, which aims to recruit high schoolers to study STEM majors at UC Berkeley or UC San Diego, eventually guiding them into STEM graduate programs or careers. For students from underserved communities that have already received their undergraduate degree in a different discipline, Facebook has invested in the Align Program to help those individuals earn computer science graduate degrees. Facebook has also pledged that minorities will make up 50% of its workforce by 2024. Currently within the company, Facebook’s inclusion initiatives include the LEAD and LEAP leadership programs for women as well as summits for other underserved groups. 

In last year’s successful Congressional App Challenge, our program served 5,229 students, well overperforming industry metrics in regards to minority, female, and rural engagement. While we are proud of the progress our coding competition has created, building a pipeline of tech talent for a diverse group of young students in STEM, we believe the support of Facebook will help to improve the diversity and inclusion of App Challenge each year.

The 2019 Congressional App Challenge is accepting applications through November 1st, 2019.