Nuestros programas de ajedrez en Tanzania

Born to Learn es una ONG que lleva operando en Moshi, Tanzania desde hace más de 10 años. En su centro educativo de Newland ofrece apoyo educativo, nutricional y social a cientos de niños.

En 2018 iniciamos un programa de ajedrez entre las actividades extraescolares del centro.

Enero de 2018, ajedrez en Newland

Comenzamos con dos grupos, un total de 50 niños, un primer grupo de preescolares y otro grupo de alumnos de primaria. Ofrecimos también formación a tres maestros locales para que pudieran seguir gestionando la actividad.

El proyecto fue un gran éxito, los alumnos se involucraron inmediatamente con el ajedrez y los beneficios que aporta el juego resultaron evidentes en cada lección. Los niños muestran una mayor capacidad de concentración, desarrollan su capacidad de pensamiento crítico y mejoran su autoestima socializando en un entorno respetuoso y constructivo.

Julio de 2018, ajedrez en Royal School

El mismo año comenzamos una colaboración con la academia estadounidense Premier Chess y la fundación Make a Difference. El maestro ajedrecista Evan Rabin llegó a Moshi junto con un grupo de voluntarios y enseñamos a jugar a 50 alumnos de secundaria en Royal Secondary School.

También celebramos el primer torneo interescolar, de la region, ya que 4 alumnos de Born To Learn participaron en el primer torneo de Royal y tuvieron la oportunidad de conocer a alumnos de otras edades y entornos.

2019

En 2019 sigue la actividad en Newland y ya son más de 200 niños en Newland los que participan en la actividad regularmente como una actividad ya establecida. El centro ofrece cuatro sesiones ente semana y el Club de Ajedrez se reúne todos los sábados.

Abril de 2019, ajedrez en Uganda

En abril comenzamos la primera colaboración internacional en el colegio Kumwenya de la ONG española Kelele, participaron dos maestros de BTL y también colaboramos con la afamada academia Katende Foundation que inspiró la película de Disney La reina de Katwe. Uno de los protagonistas de la película se unió al equipo de BTL y organizamos un taller de 2 semanas en el que 80 alumnos de primaria aprendieron a jugar y participaron en su primer torneo en Fort Portal.

Uno de los protagonistas de la película se unió al equipo de BTL y organizamos un taller de 2 semanas en el que 80 alumnos de primaria aprendieron a jugar y participaron en su primer torneo en Fort Portal.

También impartimos un taller a todos los maestros del centro con una acogida estupenda. Ofrecimos formación adicional para dirigir el club a uno de los maestros y al cocinero, por el gran interés que había mostrado.

Junio de 2019, ajedrez en Kikavu

Kikavu es el pueblo más cercano a Newland, realizamos un taller con los niños del pueblo con el objetivo de expandir la actividad en el área, realizamos un taller de dos semanas donde enseñamos a 30 alumnos que pueden ahora participar en el Club de Ajedrez de Newland para jugar contra sus vecinos.

Julio de 2019, ajedrez en Uru

Una vez más colaboramos con Make a Difference y realizamos un taller de una semana con 50 alumnos de secundaria. Una vez más contó con la participación de alumnos de BTL. Jason Bui, uno de los maestros, publicó este artículo en Chessbase.

2020

Comenzamos el año con dos nuevos proyectos en la región de Kigoma, al oeste de Tanzania. En un centro prescolar con el que colabora BTL ensenamos a jugar a 20 niños.

Enero de 2020, ajedrez en Kabanga

Kabanga cuenta con una residencia para alumnos con necesidades especiales. Aquí pudimos formar a más de 80 alumnos y a dos profesores asistentes. El impacto de la actividad en este contexto fue excelente y nos ha inspirado a continuar con este tipo de proyectos, ya que el ajedrez ha demostrado adaptarse muy bien a sus necesidades.

A día de hoy

El ajedrez sigue con fuerza en Born To Learn y es la base para la expansion de la actividad en la región. Actualmente estamos colaborando con varios centros de diversos tipos e identificamos proyectos para que crezca la comunidad ajedrecista en Moshi.

El objetivo es crear una red que permita organizar torneos de forma que los alumnos de diversos entornos puedan socializar y superarse a sí mismos.

El equipo

Luis Cuerdo dirige los programas de ajedrez de BTL, es un maestro certificado de ajedrez y lleva más de 4 años colaborando con Born to Learn.
También son de vital importancia los maestros locales que muestran un gran entusiasmo por el juego y que garantizan la sostenibilidad del proyecto. Actualmente otros 3 maestros de Born To Learn están capacitados para enseñar ajedrez y organizar las sesiones del club. Se trata del maestro de música Frank Mbise y las maestras de prescolar y primaria Janeth Macha e Irene Silayo

Janeth y Frank con la primera generación de jugadores de BTL

Luis con la directora de BTL, Devotha

Irene con algunos alumnos muy avanzados

A World of Chess in One Day

The Born to Learn Educational Center in Moshi, Tanzania, joined the celebration of the World Chess Day the 20th of July. For that purpose we used for the first time the giant chess-set that Meliá Arusha recently donated and that we wholeheartedly thank them for.

A new toy thanks to Meliá Arusha

The chess club in Born to Learn is just a tiny part of a much larger educational project where over 300 kids of all ages and circumstances visit our center in Newland every week for education, nutrition and mentoring.

With the excuse of the International Chess Day we showcased the game to a broader audience, first to a group of 23 Kindergarten kids (4-5 y/o), then to 20 kids from the English Course (14-17 y/o) and finally a general public of about 100 kids (12-16 y/o) that observed the exhibition matches.

Kindergarten

Currently Born to Learn (BTL) has 4 kindergarten classes totaling almost 100 kids. It is a very successful program that offers a much needed nutritional and educational basis on a fundamental age, it also provides a much needed time relief for their families.

Chess is a resource as any other for the kids on these ages, where they are learning very basic memory, motion and language skills and where the most important part is the development of their emotional and social values in good fun.

Getting to know the characters

We did a 40 minute activity where the kids learned the names of the pieces and they run around the board to experiment with the colors, lines and textures.

Stepping on a new world

English Course

Every morning there is a group of 20 kids of ages between 15 and 18 years old that for diverse reason haven’t been able to register in a school. BTL offers them the opportunity to improve their English level in preparation to reincorporating to school or to any other formation.

A bit of theory first…

With this group we focused on chess as a fun activity to relax the mind and to interact with the other kids in English, supervised by their teachers.

…and then a lot of action

When we teach chess, we start to play and compete from day 1, here teachers and students practice with the rook, the first piece we usually teach. You can see how they are engaged, entertained and they socialize in a different manner with their teacher and they release stress. For the first time, the playing field is leveled for teachers and students

After School Programs

From 4 to 7 pm BTL receives over 150 kids that after finishing school have the opportunity to play football, learn music, do handcrafts, review Maths or English… and many other activities that serve as a complement to their education and personal development. They also receive a much welcomed early dinner every day.

Among these activities we have the Chess Club that has over 50 regular participants. This was their day to shine and for starters they were ecstatic about the giant chess-set donation that BTL received.

The chess set by itself has been a great marketing strategy, it attracted the attention of all of the kids, including teachers. The first group of younger kids did a simple game of setting up the board, this shows how dynamic and simple can chess get to be, you don’t need to be a genius, just show your willingness to play.

Ready, get set, go!

The main course of the day was the big match-up of the big kids. Jasinta and Manase, the best players in the school, lead each a team of eight players that would take turns to move. The tension and excitement were great and you could see how the public would get involved, even if many were not familiar with the specifics of the game.

Maximum expectation

Finally, as it is common in Tanzania and a good reason why we keep coming, they all celebrated joyfully, jumping, laughing, dancing, sharing, because be it chess, music, winning, losing… life is always celebrated here.

Just another day in paradise

Our Chess Programs in Tanzania

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Born to Learn is an NGO that has been operating in the Kilimanjaro Region in Tanzania for over ten years. There it provides educational, health, nutritional and social support to hundreds of children.

In 2018 we started a Chess Program among the after-school activities that the center in Newland provides.

January 2018, Chess in Newland

We started with two groups, totaling 50 children, half of them preschoolers and the other half of diverse ages from primary school. We also trained 3 local teachers to be able to continue with the chess club on their own.

The project was very successful, the children were engaged immediately and the benefits were evident in every lesson. The children show a higher capacity of concentration, they developed critical thinking skills and they also socialize in a respectful and constructive environment.

July 2018, Chess in the Royal School Nja Panda

That same year in July we started a collaboration with Premier Chess and the Make a Difference. The Chess Master Evan Rabin from New York arrived with a group of volunteer chess players to teach a 1 week chess workshop to 50 secondary school students in the Royal Secondary School.

We also played the first interscholastic tournament in the Kilimanjaro region, were 4 children from BTL successfully participated.

2019

By the second year over 200 children in Newland have been introduced to the game, we play tournaments regularly and it has become just another activity for the development of the children. They have the chance to play twice a week during schooldays and the chess club meets on Saturdays.

April 2019, Chess in Uganda

In April we started the first international collaboration with the Robert Katende Initiative, reknowned for Disney’s movie The Queen of Katwe.

One of the original pioneers featured in the acclaimed movie joined our efforts. We organized a 2 week workshop were we taught 80 students from primary one to primary four in Uganda, in the Spanish run school Kelele, near Fort Portal.

All the teachers learned how to play chess, and they did have a blast. We provided special training to continue with the chess club to one of the teachers and to one of the cooks, who showed a lot of interest for the game.

June 2019, Chess in Kikavu

Kikavu is the closest village to Newland, back in the Kilimanjaro region, there we started teaching chess to the children there in June with the goal of extending the game in the area, we organized a two week workshop where we taught 30 children that can now visit the Chess Club in Newland to play against their neighbors.

July 2019 Chess in Uru

The collaboration with Make a Difference continued the next year and we did a one week workshop were we taught over 50 secondary school students. Once more we held an interscholastic tournament at the end of the tournament. This is an article published in Chessbase.

2020

We started the year strong with two new projects in the Kigoma region in west Tanzania. In Kigoma city we taught 20 children in a local kindergarten associated to Born To Learn.

January 2020, Chess in Kabanga

Kabanga holds a boarding center for children with special needs. We taught the game to over 80 children and to two teacher assistants. The impact of the game in the center has been inspiring and we aim to continue in these kind of projects, since chess has proven to be very adequate to their needs.

Chess from now on

The chess activities in the Born To Learn are going strong and they continue to be the foundation for the expansion of chess in the area. Currently we are starting the collaboration with other centers to expand the chess community in the Moshi area.

The goal is to teach children in other schools and to organize tournaments that will allow children to socialize and challenge themselves. It will also be an opportunity for the local teachers to gain experience in new environments.

The Team

Luis Cuerdo leads the chess program in BTL, he is a certified chess teacher that has been collaborating with Born to Learn for the last 4 years and who has been teaching chess all over the world.
However this is not a one man effort, one of the main goals is to get local teachers involved to guarantee the sustainability of the project. At the moment three more teachers from Born To Learn are qualified to teach Chess and to assist in the workshops. They are Frank Mbise, also a music teacher and the Kindergarten and Primary School Teachers Janeth Macha and Irene Silayo

Janeth and Frank with the first generation of BTL chess players

Luis with the BTL principal Devotha

Irene with some specially thoughtful students

The Game of Kings – Lesson 1

This is a great opportunity to teach the game of chess, if you don’t know where to start, this is a simple stepping stone.

The King vs King is usually the first game we play with new kids. This game is a very good example of how beneficial teaching the game is for the children and also of how rewarding it is to teach it.

First lesson for the kids from Kelele Africa

The game is as basic as it gets, each player has his king only and has to capture the enemy’s king. Kings move in every direction one step at a time and they capture the pieces where they land.

So, who will win? For any adult this is a no-brainer, the game will always be a draw, since none of the Kings may approach the other one and therefore they would be wandering forever over the board. This what in game theory they call a solved game.

However, this ‘no-brainer’ process is anything but that, and it is obvious when you let kids play, because they can play this for hours.

This is when the magic happens and you can see how children start to develop on their own reasoning individually, at their own pace and spontaneously. Where there was nothing, now there is an structure, a concept, and idea.

There are three main steps you can clearly notice when the kids start to play this game:

• First, kids learn about consequences, initially their actions are random, they just move the king and wait to see what happens, but gradually they realize that among the 3 to 8 options they have in every move, some will be winning and some will be losing. After a while kids stop doing losing (illegal) moves.

• Secondly, when the kid has learnt no to do losing moves, i.e. not getting within range of the opponent’s king, he starts to wonder if his opponent has reached this stage. This is very important, since the kid realizes that reasoning is individual, he develops self consciousness and awareness. If he is winning constantly, he is aware that he knows something his opponent doesn’t and vice-versa.

• Finally, usually when all the kids have gone through the first two steps, the kids start to recognize the pattern. The kids will notice that there is no end to the game, and suddenly they are introduced to concepts such us endlessness and how the same set of circumstances will generate always the same results.

This process can take up a full lesson, even longer depending on the age of the kids, and it is always a pleasure to witness, it is like watching fireworks or popcorn popping gradually while kids learn on their own while they are having fun playing, and this is just day 1.

After we learnt about the King and his limitations, we will learn about his travelling efficiency, following the breadcrumbs in the 2nd lesson.