Local teens to represent Montana at Congressional App Challenge

A Kalispell Code Girls United team will represent Montana at the nationwide Congressional App Challenge for an app they designed to combat human trafficking.

The Tech Trio team, which includes Emma Anderson, Isabelle Ashley and Makayla Davenport, advanced to the national level after winning Montana’s Congressional district contest with their app, “Found.” This is the second year the Tech Trio has won at the state level and the fourth year the girls have worked together as a team.

In June, the team’s app will go up against ones created by students from around the nation for a chance to be put on display at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., for a year.

The Tech Trio team designed “Found” after reading news reports about human trafficking, particularly among Indigenous communities. The group also learned that teens and young adults, people with limited resources, are targeted by human traffickers.

The app allows users across the U.S. to send and access information on missing individuals near them, according to the team’s app description. The information includes details such as age, height and last known location. Users may also report suspicious activities to the National Human Trafficking Hotline and local law enforcement.
The app is also intended to educate users by helping them identify signs of human trafficking. As teens themselves, team members also designed a simulation feature to “prepare teens and online adults for online trafficking threats such as manipulation and luring [tactics],” they could potentially encounter. Additionally, users can explore different statistics to learn the extent of the issue.

“We want to empower them and give them a resource in their communities to help combat this problem,” Davenport said.

Davenport said the team talked with Nic McKinley, founder of the nonprofit DeliverFund in Whitefish, to learn more about the issue and gain feedback on what to include that would be most beneficial to users.

“Through him we were able to find out that most trafficking started online,” Davenport said, on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

“Traffickers groom teens and befriend them,” she said, tactics used to manipulate and gain trust with victims.

“It’s really scary to be quite honest,” she said.

From concept to prototype, The Tech Trio spent about 60 to 80 hours developing the app, which included researching, surveying and talking to people, and writing a 10-page business plan, Davenport said. The team is currently working on debugging the app.

“To get it in the market, first of all, we’d have to do a lot of debugging and refining,” she said, and there would be a minimal one-time fee.

“It would be amazing to actually get it out on the Google Play Store,” Davenport said, noting that the team would like it to be free.

To view the team’s pitch video visit https://bit.ly/40Tmgzt. A video demonstrating the app may be viewed at https://bit.ly/3JWrtQL.

Code Girls United is an after-school program that teaches coding and business skills to Montana girls in fourth through 12th grade.

“Coding has given us an amazing opportunity to grow in a field that’s mostly male-dominated,” Davenport said, who is already planning to study computer programming in college.

For more information about the Code Girls program, visit https://codegirlsunited.org.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.