Mustard Math wins Rep. Julia Brownley’s (CA-26) 2020 Congressional App Challenge

When asked what inspired the creation of Mustard Math, the students said, “We wanted to make an app that helped elementary school students with math. We decided that a gamified math environment would be the most effective way to encourage students to practice their math skills. We also wanted to encourage the users to take care of their community and environment by picking up and recycling trash. In the app, picking up and recycling trash is a task that is positively reinforced by rewarding the users with more fuel so that they can continue solving math problems and picking up more trash.”

Over 6,500 students registered for the 2020 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 3,088 functioning apps, marking the end of an extremely successful Congressional App Challenge amid the COVID-19 pandemic. All told, 308 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 49 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, DC.

The CAC is an initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host competitions 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. The Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental support. In the six years of the Congressional App Challenge, thousands of functional apps have been created by over 30,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.