U.S. Representative Brett Guthrie, left, and Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd, right, sits with friends and family members of the Barren County and Glasgow students who placed in the second congressional district's app challenge. Michael Crimmins/Glasgow News 1
By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
United States Representative Brett Guthrie presented awards to the first and fourth place finishers in this year’s Congressional App Challenge at the Barren County High School Innovation Zone on April 23.
The first place winner was a trio of Barren County High School students. Emmaline Phelps, Brooke Gibson and Cole Young won the congressional district’s competition with their Allergy Aware app, which helps people and families dealing with food allergies “by providing them with resources to safely manage their dietary restrictions.”
Cole Young, who said he was a first-time coder, said they worked on the app during an hour-and-a-half free period from September to October. Biomedical student Emmaline Phelps said the trio toyed with a few other app ideas before settling on Allergy Aware, which has a personal connection for Phelps who has a peanut allergy.
“We were really focused on trying to combine our [career] pathways together,” Phelps said. “We thought about doing and app about challenges with diabetes…and being able to do allergies, since that effects us more personally it was a better fit for us to do.”
Unlike other allergy apps, they said their app focuses more on the medical side rather than solely on dietary restrictions.
“A lot of other apps focus on different problems than we did,” Gibson said. “There are some other apps that are about allergies but they focused mainly on nutrition aspects. Our focus on everything about allergies.”
“Ours focuses more on the medical side of things such as symptoms and how to treat them, especially the epi-pen guide,” Young added.
Allergy Aware will be displayed on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website with other winning apps from across the country. They also traveled to Washington D.C. over spring break to show off their app with other congressional district winners.
Glasgow High School sophomore Danica Stephens placed fourth for her app Serving Society and received an award from the congressman on April 23. She added that she heard about the challenge late and had two weeks to complete Serving Society.
Her app helps bring community needs to light by pairing volunteers with their desired community service.
“I feel like [this app] contributes to the community,” Stephens said. “Making this app has made my heart happy.”
Guthrie said competitions like this exemplify “other types of talents” that might be overlooked, but will “absolutely change the world.”
“You see bigger crowds at football games, basketball games and other places where students show off great talent, and sometimes we forget there’s a lot of other talent,” Guthrie said. “These are the people who are going to change the world.”
“What [the students] ranked and what [they’ve] done is unbelievable,” he added.
Danica Stephens is a sophomore at Glasgow High School. She finished forth in Kentucky’s Second Congressional App Challenge. Michael Crimmins/Glasgow News 1
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