Ripe with imagination and drive, eight-year-old Rishi Sethi set off on a mission in 1998 to bring chess to his small-town community in Illinois. First on his personal agenda was to start a chess club at his local elementary school, and with the help of his peers, his vision soon became a reality.

 

Every day after school, chess club would be held in the gymnasium of Grove Avenue Elementary School in Barrington, and kids would come to learn about chess and scrimmage with each other for awards. Soon, a ranking system had emerged, and second graders who entered chess club as Squires could eventually leave as Dragon Masters at the end of their elementary school careers.

 

Nonetheless, creative ideas constantly weaved into the program, but foremost of all of them was a plan to combine chess education with service and philanthropy. From here, the name, “Charity Chess Tournament” was dubbed, essentially chess competitions where 100% of proceeds went to charity.

 

And at this point in time, Chess Without Borders was born.

 

By 2008, the gymnasium at Rishi’s old elementary school was roaring with hundreds of kids after school every day. His entire community was impressed by the success of this one chess program, but students were still missing out an opportunity to compete with other chess clubs from other communities. Soon every school at District 220 had chess clubs run by local students under the supervision of Rishi Sethi. Rishi entered high school with a big roster of chess students who were also becoming quite good at the game.so he invited Grandmaster Yury Shulman to take over the program.

 

This is when Grandmaster, Yury Shulman, traveled to the Chicago suburbs to join Chess Without Borders and make this mission of expanding chess education and service a tradition.

 

For the next eleven years, a vast community of volunteers helped bring chess to the Chicago land area, while pursuing service and philanthropy. By 2016, Chess Without Borders had helped start up more than 20 chess clubs and encourage over 50 chess clubs to start up independently. In addition, Chess Without Borders had founded chess programs globally in Nigeria, Sudan, The Marshall Islands, India, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Chile and nationally, in needed schools in the US.

 

Today, the group of closely knit volunteers persists to grow in numbers, and they continue their mission to assure every person has access to affordable healthcare along with chess education in their lives.

Currently in 2021 $210,00 has been donated to local and global charities, students continue to excel in chess competing at state and national levels and over 20,000 hours of service were provided by youth and adults. Chess Without Borders has won many awards fro its unique combination of education.