Innovation by Design Award

Reaching Beyond Expectations

Fast Company has nominated the award winning volunteer team at Chess Without Borders for an “Innovation by Design” award. The award is to “honor creative work at the intersection of design, business, and innovation.”

The nomination recognizes the artistic design of the textbook, Chess! lessons from a Grandmaster that has reached out to educate thousands of students and provided opportunities for service learning to hundreds of youth. Projects have a wide range of creative and geographic diversity from establishing a computer center in the slums of India to distributing textbooks and chess sets to a refuge camp in Jordan to raising funds for protecting Albinos in Tanzania. Last year youth volunteers established a chess club at the Boys and Girls center in Elgin, IL.

Visit: https://www.chesswob.org/history of chess...

For the last 3 years the Presidential Youth volunteers at Chess Without Borders in collaboration with Salem UMC have raised funds that help host a Christmas meal for x prisoners and their families in December. Each year over 100 people enjoy a lunch and each person also receives a gift. This year the organizer of this event, Mr Tommy Johnson tragically suffered from a serious heart attack so the event had to be cancelled. We are grateful for his recovery but wish to reach out and help even more. At Chess Without Borders historically youth who have engaged in raising funds for a cause have developed remarkable creativity, drive and motivation enabling the program to raise $136, 539 to be donated to charities since 2000. More importantly youth volunteers have engaged other youth and community members to join their causes On their last Christmas visit in Chicago, 20 volunteers including youth from Chess Without Borders served a special lunch and distributed gifts for over 100 x prisoners and their families.

Team: 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, Arnav and Adu Batta, Dominic Oetinger, Sophia Cai, and Duniya Diyadawagamage.

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