This app will help you explore Villanova’s Special Olympics Fall Festival

Today starts Amitoj Sawhney’s favorite weekend of the year.

No, it’s not the Villanova University computer science major’s birthday, nor is he spending it at a hackathon.
Rather, this weekend, Villanova will host the 27th annual Special Olympics Pennsylvania Fall Festival. And thanks to Sawhney’s new app, all the information the expected 5,000 attendees need will be available on their phones.
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The app — called NovaFallFest — is set up in four parts:

• A campus map to help athletes and festival attendees find events on campus throughout the weekend
• A full schedule of events for the festival
• A schedule for the Healthy Athletes events
• Emergency contacts and social media links

The school will host more than 1,500 athletes and coaches representing 39 different local programs. Over 2,000 students volunteer over the course of the weekend and a committee of 90 students works on all aspect of the festival for nine months. The event is a big deal for Villanova, a campus with just 10,000 students.
Sawhney was the app’s primary coder and one of just three members on the Computers and Registration Committee for the festival along with Angelo Milone and Hannah Lee, who helped with the app’s design and planning.
The entire festival is staffed by student volunteers; Sawhney wasn’t paid for his work. But it’s clear how important this event is to him and that NovaFallFest has been a labor of love: “I think every athlete that comes here, every athlete that participates is a true role model to all of us,” he said.