Are you still of the weird view that girls cannot play chess?
You’d love to meet our Queens from Jos, Nigeria, who debunk that silly myth.
After Promoting Queens’ inspiring work at Trans-Ekulu Girls Secondary School, Enugu, our next stop was the beautiful city of Jos -The home of peace and tourism.
Our base in Jos was the Girl Child Educational Centre, Kabon and we were ably led by our amazing team member, Deborah Agwom Dembo without whom our ordeal in Jos would have been strenuous.
Ready? Let’s meet the Queens from Jos!
Girls can play chess!
Do you still wrestle with the verity of this statement?
Rest assured, this is a proven fact, demonstrated repeatedly.
If we talk about pure abilities and skills, I believe there should be no reason why women cannot play as well as men — Susan Polgar.
This is the essence of our work at Promoting Queens – to help girls believe in themselves on and off the chessboard. This is the confidence we instilled in the girls at the Girl Child Educational Centre Jos – #Girls can play chess!
Eager to know more about our experiences with the Queens in Jos?
Queens from the Plateau
The Girl Child Educational Centre in Kabon, Jos played host to Promoting Queens for 2 weeks.
Our vibrant team led by the amazing Deborah Agwom Dembo was exceptional, working tirelessly to gift chess to the amazing girls.
The School authority was warm and welcoming. Mrs Cecilia Amusa, the head teacher was indeed thankful for our visit and applauded the Promoting Queens initiative. This warms our hearts and inspires us to do even more, and we shall!
Let’s meet the girls at Girl Child Educational Center Jos. Such spirited maidens they are, courageous, gleeful, and smart, taking up chess like it’s their mother tongue. It wasn’t long before we got them interested in chess, this is always music to our ears.
77 girls signed up for the chess sessions, but as we moved forward with the classes the number dwindled and stabilised at 48 girls.
We are proud that 48 of the girls picked an interest in chess.
Not all the girls left the chess program out of disinterest, most of the girls who left had more pressing academic needs they needed to sort.
To help the school, we donated branded Promoting Queens notebooks to all the girls and established a chess club in the school to help foster a chess culture over time. To this effect, we donated 5 chessboards to the school.
Now, for the juicy bit. In our typical outreach flair, we organised a chess tournament for the ladies. After all, why deny our J-town queens a taste of tournament play?
Queens on board
The chess tournament was keenly contested, you could almost feel the tension, but then again, the girls played with all graciousness and integrity.
We encourage this manner of play, and we were thrilled by the grit the girls put into playing chess. On a lighter note, watch out for our Jos Queens!
Below is an image of the leaderboard after the tournament.
So we have our winners. But it’s useful to mention that all the girls performed nothing short of exceptional after merely 2 weeks of chess sessions.
It’s all smiles from our top 3 players holding up their medals. They weren’t only adorned with medals, they were also awarded scholarships for 1 year to support them with their academics. The recipients of the Promoting Queens scholarship were:
- Nyiri Victor Pam
- Victoria Francis Wang
- Celina Sunday
Promoting Queens yet again had a swell time working with the girls at Girl Child Educational Center Jos. We thank the school administration for the warm welcome and support.
The school is always receptive to organisations or persons who hope to collaborate with them and give the best education to their girls.
As you know, saying goodbye is the hardest, the girls, now Queens after the chess touch were in their feelings as we signed out.
It’s only goodbye, for now. We will always be in touch doing this amazing work of empowering women and girls through chess.
To our amazing team, you are everything you are and more – Amazing!
Be a part of our story, join us at Promoting Queens.
