iHearU wins Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Sixth District

When asked what inspired the creation of iHearU, the students said, ”We were inspired to create our app after doing some research on current issues. When looking for topics to address, we came across some alarming figures. According to a CAP analysis conducted from 2009-2018, on a daily basis, there are approximately 1100 threats of gun violence, 210 gun-related injuries, and 103 deaths due to guns during violent crimes.  And the current situation is worsening, as is evidenced by the constant barrage of gory images on news stations. Upon hearing these statistics and learning about the instances of gun violence (such as school shootings), we began to wonder “What if this happened to us or someone we know?” So, we started to think about what we could do. We talked to our school teachers about this and our Computer Science teacher was fascinated by our curiosity. He worked with us and told us to make an app and try to invoke change in our community. Though motivated by the sentiment, we were flabbergasted. We had little experience in app development, unaware of what asynchronous programming or app activities were when our computer science teacher was talking about the basics of apps. But after some consideration, we decided to follow through on our teacher’s recommendation, excited by the prospects of learning such an advanced topic. And though we started with block code, we learned a lot through our struggles and are prepared to improve this app with more advanced programming, like Java. The only question now was what should our app do? After days of deliberation, we decided to focus more on how we could keep the user safe than actually prevent the crime. As a result, we made an app that could help protect us in a dangerous situation. Using our app, iHearU, many perpetrators could be caught, many injuries could be less severe, and many deaths could be prevented.”