Chess for Change: Empowering Children for Inspiring Future

May 23, 2024

My name is Nurzhigit Munarbek uulu(SFW-123) and my teammate is Sultan Baisbekov(AMI-123). In the spring semester of 2024, we took the Challenges of the 21st Century course, led by Professor Ekaterina Galimova. Within the course, we were given an opportunity to participate in the Civic Engagement Bridging Classroom and Community project.I found participation in this project useful for personal growth. It was interesting to find out how children with full families differ from orphans. In addition, it would be useful to get experience in raising and communicating with children. But there were also fears that children would not be supervised. Our decision to introduce chess as a means to improve their well-being was met with enthusiasm from Professor Ekaterina Galimova, who provided invaluable support throughout. Collaborating with the director of “Elistan” Nuriyet Abdulaziz, was a pivotal step towards realizing this endeavor.

Before commencing the club's activities, we sought guidance from AUCA psychologist Aida Parpieva. Her insights into the children's backgrounds and potential challenges were instrumental in preparing us for the task ahead. Armed with her advice, we embarked on conducting 12 chess classes for the children from February to May. Fortunately in our first lesson we realized that kids are just like kids, they were very obedient and started treating us like brothers. We also had a plan to determine the approximate level of each student. Luckily, everyone knew how to play more or less, only a few didn't even know how the pieces stand and move. So we had the task to teach basic things to students who didn't know how to play at all so that they could catch up with the others. To determine their level we made them play with each other. Only one student, Azamat, was completely unfamiliar with chess. When he lost to his first opponent in chess, we noticed that he had an insecure feeling of being behind. To solve this problem, we played with this child ourselves and paid more attention to him until he caught up with his friends. There were also cases when children became bored and lost concentration while playing and then we gathered them and organized competitions to see who would be the first to solve a tactical problem, such as mate in one, three, five moves and they enthusiastically tried to find the right move. This experience taught us priceless lessons about compassion, empathy, and leadership. It puts a big emphasis on individualized care and support for each child in our lives, and we are very grateful for the opportunity to have left a positive impact on their lives.

We couldn't make it all this without Professor Ekaterina Galimova, the director of “Elistan”, psychologist Aida Parpieva, and everyone at the Center of Civic Engagement at AUCA. The support and guidance were huge in making this project successful, and we are really looking forward to continuing contributing towards future Civic Engagement projects.

<< go to news list