PRAPP wins Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 25th District
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart has named Rafael Niebles from Ronald W. Reagan/Doral Senior High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 25th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of PRAPP, the student said, “As a recent immigrant to the U.S at the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, my adaptation process has been rather difficult. Although finding new friends, feeling comfortable in an environment, and adapting to a new culture has proven to be difficult, getting the most out of my education has been one of the greater challenges. Due to the limited opportunities for doing so during the 2019-2020 school year thanks to online education, the current school year has been my only opportunity to do so in this country. Although this has given me numerous opportunities to participate in various activities, the amount of the latter which I’m currently involved in limits the time I’m able to dedicate to other important matters, namely SAT preparation, which is essential for transitioning into university. With PRAPP, I intend to solve this problem, by giving students in situations like mine a simple, free, and speedy way to prepare for their college entrance exams without compromising much of their time, energy, money, or headspace, by offering them quality practice in as little as 5 minutes.”
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.
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, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.
The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.