{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://trahan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3698", "Trahan Announces Chelmsford High School Student as Winner of 2025 Congressional App Challenge", "2025-12-12", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "House", "MA", "Lori Trahan", "T000482", "trahan.house.gov", "trahan", "https://trahan.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx?DocumentTypeID=27", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, DC \u2013 Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03) announced Reya Kannan, a Tyngsborough native and 11th grader at Chelmsford High School, as the winner of the 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Massachusetts\u2019 Third Congressional District. Her app, \u201cYard2Yum,\u201d offers a practical and innovative solution to food waste by connecting restaurants, farms, and composting facilities.\n\n\u201cEvery year, the Congressional App Challenge highlights the incredible creativity and talent of students across our district, and Reya\u2019s work truly stands out,\u201d Congresswoman Trahan said. \u201cYard2Yum is not only an impressive technological achievement, but also a thoughtful response to a real challenge facing communities across our region. Reya took an issue she saw up close, learned from local farmers and small businesses, and built a tool that supports sustainability and strengthens our local food system. I\u2019m proud to recognize her as this year\u2019s Congressional App Challenge winner.\u201d\n\n\u201cCreating Yard2Yum allowed me to build a viable solution for a problem I'm passionate about -food waste across many communities,\u201d Reya said. \u201cThrough the Congressional App Challenge, I was able to turn my ideas into an actual app, combining coding and stem to create impact.\u201d\n\nYard2Yum is designed with two main interfaces: one for restaurants and one for farms. Restaurants can track the amount of food waste they donate, schedule pickups, and earn reward points based on pounds donated. These points can then be used to purchase locally sourced products from participating farms. On the other side of the platform, farms can access compost generated from restaurant food waste and sell their produce directly through the app. This creates a reliable channel for farms to connect with local restaurants and strengthen their businesses.\n\nReya was inspired to create the app after working at her father\u2019s restaurant, where she saw large amounts of food scraps thrown away each day and noticed the financial burden of costly disposal services. Her curiosity about the broader food system led her to speak with farms across New England. One Massachusetts farmer shared that rising compost prices were making it difficult to maintain production. Recognizing the opportunity to bridge these challenges, Reya developed Yard2Yum to convert discarded food into compost that supports farmers while reducing waste and creating a more sustainable local food cycle.\n\nAbout the Congressional App Challenge:\n\nTrahan invited Yumio Saneyoshi, the founder of the Penguin Coding School in Acton, and members of his team to judge this year\u2019s competition. The Congressional App Challenge began in 2013, and since then, the challenge has inspired more than 40,000 students across all 50 states to program an app.\n\n###", 1, "2026-04-06T14:24:52Z", "2026-04-06T15:56:12Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://trahan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3698"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.2365160509943962, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}