FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov completed his two-day visit to Hungary on the evening of March 1. The concluding event was a meeting with Dr. Pal Schmitt, President of the Hungarian Republic, IOC Vice President and two time Olympic Champion. During their one and a half hour meeting, they discussed the role of chess in education and the development of young people, the new opportunities for organizing chess tournaments in Hungary, the significance of cooperation among the federations of FIDE and the expected and necessary changes in the Hungarian Chess Federation (HCF).
In the last few months alone our chess-in-schools population has grown by several thousand due to the work done by the Magnificent Chess Foundation, a charitable body of which I am the Chairman. The demand for chess is very high and currently vastly exceeds our ability to cope due to limited resources.
At present we are teaching about ten thousand children in the schools. This is tremendous from our point of view having regard to the total population in Jamaica of roughly 2.5 million people.
FRA French Convention with Ministry of Education
Monday, 28 February 2011 14:51
The French Chess Federation (FFE - Fédération Française des Echecs) first signed a convention with the national Ministry of Education in 2007. That was for three years. The convention has recently been renewed for another three years until 2014.
The most important point is that the Ministry of Education officially recognizes the educational benefits of chess.
Just over a week ago, Tufts University (Massachusetts) announced the winners of the inaugural "Capturing Change on Camera" video competition, which promotes nonprofits that help children and families and filmmakers who tell their stories through visual testimonials. This video, by Bao Nguyen, won second prize under the title "Chess Saved my Life," the words uttered by Juan de Jesus at the end of the video.
The video (duration 4m 50s) was produced by Chess-in-the- Schools, a New York City-based organization dedicated to improving academic performance and building self-esteem among inner-city public school children through chess. Official Web Site
Why play chess? Why teach chess? Chess Institute of Canada uses chess to teach life lessons to kids: making decisions and being responsible for your words and actions.
Today's video is from Vladimir Birarov CIS Project Coordinator for Chess Federation of Canada [CFC]. Duration 1m 30s.
FIDE President’s first official visit to Hungary.
