Lofgren Announces CA-19 Winner of 2020 Congressional App Challenge
SAN JOSE, CA – Today, Representative Zoe Lofgren (CA-19) announced that Diya Hituvalli, a junior at Valley Christian High School, won the 2020 Congressional App Challenge for California’s 19th Congressional District.
Diya created her app, KeepMeSafe, using Swift, the iOS Speech Framework, the MapKit Framework and the Firebase Database.
“I congratulate Diya on her achievement in creating an app to help empower women and girls. While exhibiting ingenuity and technological savvy, she also worked to meet an important societal need with an easy-to-use app,” said Rep. Lofgren. “I also thank every Santa Clara County student who submitted an app – all of the submissions were unique and impressive. I look forward to seeing our hometown STEM students of today leading the successful Silicon Valley companies of the future.”
“My mom showed me a news article that talked about how a 14-year old girl from my city had been abducted and raped by three men. I learned that the girl texted her friends on Snapchat, who found her location on the Snapchat map, and called the police. I thought to myself that maybe if this whole process was shortened, she could have been saved before this occurred. What would have been most helpful in the situation would be an app that was able to scare off the attacker and send the location to the police in a short amount of time. I started brainstorming, and from there, KeepMeSafe was born,” said Diya. “KeepMeSafe utilizes voice recognition technology to help the user in times of need. It is my hope that KeepMeSafe helps women all over the world.”
Click here to view Diya’s submission.
The annual Congressional App Challenge is a nation-wide effort to spur interest in coding, STEM and computer-science education among middle- and high-school students.
Each district-winning app is eligible to be displayed in the U.S. Capitol Building and featured on house.gov. Winning students are invited to a #HouseofCode #Congress4cs reception in Washington, DC and receive $250 in Amazon Web Services credits. The Congressional App Challenge publishes all national winners online.
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