Browning High School Students to Showcase Mental Health App at National Science Fair
The high school seniors won the Congressional App Challenge for their app, ‘Sspomo,’ which provides a centralized hub for mental health resources
By Zoë Buhrmaster
Throughout the school year, Aiyahna Green, Sophia Guerrero-Gobert and Kalani SunRhodes met during their lunch periods, hunching over their phones. The three Browning High School seniors were building an app that could help provide mental health resources for teenagers.
The girls represent the Browning High School chapter of Code Girls United, a nonprofit that since 2016 has provided after-school programming to teach girls in Montana technology literacy and business skills. The seniors had set their sights on the Congressional App Challenge, an event that allows middle and high school students to compete for a chance to showcase their skills on Capitol Hill.
In January, U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke selected the group’s app as winner of the 2025 challenge in Montana’s western district. Next week, the girls will travel to Washington, D.C., to showcase the app at the National Science Fair’s House of Code event, sponsored by an anonymous donor.
“It took a lot of creativity from everyone and just adding on each other’s ideas,” SunRhodes said. “That part was pretty easy, and it was honestly fun creating it.”
Green, a Code Girls member since her freshman year, came up with the idea to create an app that focused on mental health. Last school year, she convinced her then-fellow juniors to join the club, and together they started collaborating on what a mental health app might contain and how to design it.
“We really wanted to focus on mental health because we know that on Native reservations it goes overlooked, and there’s not many resources, or really not any resources, for mental health,” Green said.
Those living on the Blackfeet Nation have been working to change that in recent years. The first tribally run mental health center in the state opened its doors on the reservation last year. School counselors also installed hush pods in Browning Public Schools to help kids access telehealth appointments in privacy, while a heavy metal class is giving students a space for creative and emotional expression.
The girls’ app, Sspomo, (the word for ‘help’ in the Blackfoot language), is another effort to increase awareness and access to mental health resources.
The girls used MIT App Inventor to help them code and design the app. Sspomo currently features a small database of resources including definitions of depression, cyberbullying and anxiety, and links to resources such as 988, the suicide hotline number. There’s also a section for journalling, along with an AI Chatbot that users can chat with about their feelings.
“We had to have a problem that we solved with our app,” Guerrero-Gobert said. “It was a little bit overwhelming … Mental health being our main topic was what made it so easy for us to stay in the group and not leave the club early on. I think that’s part of the reason why we kept going for so long.”
The app is not available for public use yet, and the girls said there are other features they want to add, such as online support groups and community resources like Sukapi Lodge, the tribally run mental health center, to connect people with mental health professionals directly through the app.
“That would be the community source that I’d go to, you know, instead of going to the doctor’s office, therapist, scheduling an appointment,” SunRhodes said of Sspomo. “It’s just right there on my phone.”