Lively: Daily Planner and Journal wins Rep. Ann Wagner’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Missouri’s Second District
Rep. Ann Wagner has named Emily Huang of Parkway Central High School and Serena Huang of Parkway Central High School as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Missouri’s Second District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Lively: Daily Planner and Journal, the students said, ”Especially in more recent years, teenagers and young adults often face mental health issues, feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the many events in their lives. On top of that, with the internet and advancing technologies, it’s easier to become distracted and harder to stay organized than ever. We ourselves face such challenges, finding it difficult to balance the numerous aspects of our lives, such as school, work, and activities. However, when we searched for and tested numerous lifestyle, mental health, and productivity apps to help us stay organized, we discovered that the apps available often served a limited purpose. When users try to incorporate such apps into their lives, they end up having to divide their thoughts and plans into multiple, disjointed pieces.
To streamline and simplify the process of planning, organizing and reflecting, we created Lively, an all-in-one daily planner and journal app that supports teens’ and young adults’ fast-paced lifestyles. Our app provides users with a centralized place to store their thoughts and plans, helping them find balance and purpose in each day.”
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
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, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.