Congressional App Challenge Announces Partnership with Thunkable
Washington, D.C. — The 2018 Congressional App Challenge (CAC) announces a partnership with San Francisco-based tech startup Thunkable, the platform that enables anyone to build their own native mobile apps for Android and iOS.
On Thunkable, users can easily design and prototype beautiful apps, program powerful functionality with drag & drop blocks, and upload apps to the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
“Thunkable’s technology allows anyone — including beginners — to build their own apps,” says Congressional App Challenge Director Rachel Décoste. “With this partnership, we aim to encourage students to explore blocks-based coding to build technology that has real impact on their communities.”
“We are thrilled to partner with the Congressional App Challenge, and empower students across the United States to leverage the power of technology to explore ideas, build apps and solve problems.” –Arun Saigal, CEO and Cofounder of Thunkable.
Saigal is a graduate of MIT, where he completed his undergraduate and masters degrees. It was at MIT where Saigal began working on MIT App Inventor, which he — along with Thunkable Cofounder Weihua James Li and the App Inventor team — helped build into the world’s largest platform for non-developers to build mobile apps. After seeing the transformative power of MIT App Inventor, Saigal and Li decided to launch Thunkable to focus on enabling people around the world to build commercial-level apps.
Together, the Congressional App Challenge and Thunkable aim to increase engagement and familiarity with coding among U.S. middle school and high school students.
Thus far this year, over 135 Members of Congress are hosting App Challenges in their respective districts. Middle school and high school students are strongly encouraged to register their intent to participate in the Congressional App Challenge by Sept 10th. More details are available here: http://www.congressionalappchallenge.us.
About the Congressional App Challenge
The CAC is a congressional initiative, managed by the Internet Education Foundation [IEF], a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. In the first 3 years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 605 App Challenges across 42 states. Over 2,400 apps have been created by nearly 9,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics. This year, the CAC initiative aims to reach even more constituents.
For more information, to sponsor, or to partner with the CAC, please contact:
Rachel Décoste
cac_media@CongressionalAppChallenge.us
571.455.1811
About Thunkable
Launched in 2015, Thunkable is the platform that enables anyone to build their own native mobile apps. Thunkable was incubated at Google Research and MIT. To learn more, please go to thunkable.com
Thunkable Media Contact:
Jimmy Haber
(650) 434–0213
press@thunkable.com
