Shreyas Parab ’18 Named Finalist in Congressional App Challenge

Congressman Pat Meehan recently named Archmere Academy junior Shreyas Parab the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in his district. Out of 2,150 students from across the United States, 650 apps were chosen as finalists. Shreyas’s application, StartMeUp, was one of them. The app finalists will be recognized by their representatives in their home states at a final gala in Washington, DC and will receive a portion of $50,000 in credits to Amazon Web Services. The apps will also be displayed in the US Capitol Building for one year and on the House.gov website.

 

StartMeUp is an educational tool that Shreyas built while self-learning programming. It is used to teach entrepreneurial values and practical skills - not through reading about it or watching others do it, but by empowering them to do it themselves. You can watch his winning entry at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmjUJs8WqQQ#action=share

 

“The hope,” Shreyas says, “is that kids and parents will have a perfect platform to cultivate the skills and knowledge of financial literacy and business in hopes that one day they will go on to be active proponents of the entrepreneurial economy that built the American Dream.” Shreyas has started two companies himself, one of which was a novelty neckwear company and the other a software company, which recently had its intellectual property acquired by a million dollar education company.

 

Shreyas plans on working on StartMeUp during the summer as his schooling and two companies keep him quite busy. Aside from his businesses, Shreyas enjoys playing tennis, participating in school clubs, and most importantly listening to Taylor Swift music. He is especially grateful to Congressman Meehan and his many initiatives to support youth, entrepreneurship, and small businesses in his district. “None of this would have been possible without the support and guidance from Congressman Meehan,” says Shreyas, “the Congressional App Challenge is optional for districts to participate in, but Congressman Meehan and his team have worked tirelessly to allow students from our area to compete. It’s kind of awesome that they provide a platform for young students to really put themselves out there like this.”

 

To find out more about the Congressional App Challenge, visit: http://www.congressionalappchallenge.us. As Congressional Co-Chair of the competition Seth Moulton (D-Mass) stated, the challenge is first and foremost a, “…bipartisan effort, which saw participation from one Independent, fifty-nine Republicans, and sixty-three Democrats. Representatives from every political viewpoint rallied around this effort to invest in our kids…”