The Best Moves

Youth volunteers at Chess Without Borders have won recognition from the Nobel Prize winning organization, Doctors Without Borders. They hosted a film festival where the humanitarian programs supported by Chess Without Borders were featured in a short video. https://filmfreeway.com/festiv...

Last year youth and adult mentors have supported local and international wide ranging projects from starting a chess club at the Elgin Boys and Girls Club to distributing chess textbooks to needy schools. They have raised funds for fighting human trafficking, protecting Albinos from persecution in Tanzania and rebuilding homes damaged by floods in Illinois. For the 9th year in a row they continue to support the education of a little girl in India and run the Maggie Gruber Computer Center in the Govindpuri slum in Delhi, India. The funds are raised from creative ventures such as selling food at tournaments, being chess coaches and tournament directors and a variety of other methods.

The humanitarian projects started by the chess program have given youth volunteer’s tremendous opportunity to create, expand and increase the depth of the existing projects. They have used their ambition, skills and talents to market, create and sustain the success of programs. They have learned about many cultures and needs in this world where they can make a difference. The youth volunteers have won national awards and have raised over $135,000 for humanitarian causes.

Ever since the inception of the chess program in Barrington the mission has combined chess education with service and philanthropy. Chess textbooks and sets have been donated to impoverished schools in Borneo, Cambodia, Chile, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, The Marshall Islands, India, Nigeria and locally in Chicago, Elgin and Washington DC.

The book is written by 2008 US Chess Champion GM Yury Shulman and Rishi Sethi, CEO of Method Mill in New York. The chess program implemented from the textbook has won many awards for its innovative approach to learning. Visit: http://shulmanchess.com/biogra... to learn about its accomplishments.

Here is the link to the textbook: https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Grandmaster-GM-Yury-Shulman/dp/0984573453/

The youth volunteers involved in this project are:

Ethan Gagliano, Pranav and Prashant Ramachandra, Prathik Kandimalla, Jack and Jane Bradley, Vishal and Rohan Ahuja, Eleanore van Marwijk Kooy, Aryan and Ayushi Shah, Toby Schwartz, Siddharth and Abhijeet Gehlaut, Nabeel Rasheed, Sanjaya and Sahitya Maheswaram, Sophia Cai, Steven Zhu, Arnav and Adu Batta, Dominic Oetinger and Duniya Diyadawagamage.

Adult mentors are: GM Yury Shulman, Dr Kiran Frey, Zein Bertacchi, Maggie Gruber Black and Dawn Moeller.

Please stop by for lunch, watch chess matches or shopping on Sat the 20th of May at the Salem Chess Tournament in Barrington to support the team to raise funds for providing a Christmas luncheon to x prisoners in Chicago. More at : www.shulmanchess.com

For ideas/suggestions to improve the program please email:

email chesswob@gmail.com