Chess Kids is an Australian company (registered business name Chess World Australia Pty Ltd ) that provides a range of chess-related products and services to schools, individuals and chess clubs. Services include coaching and recreational programs, and vacation-seminars they refer to as "incursions". Their affiliated retailer, Chess World sells chess equipment and accessories to schools.
Chess Kids organises extensive local and regional chess tournaments for students in more than 645 schools across Australia, including the annual National Interschool Chess Championships, with over 9,000 students competing on the regional and national level in 2007.
The company was founded in 1998 by chess enthusiast David Cordover, who was only 20 years old at the time. The start-up funds were provided by the cash prize when Cordover won the Nescafé Big Break Award contest for his business plan vision of bringing chess to every school student in Australia. In an article in Teacher: the National Education Magazine, Cordover described the educational and character-development benefits of chess competition for young children; and wrote that "Research has shown that chess confers many educational benefits, including developing problem-solving ability, abstract analytical skill, spatial ability, memory and concentration."
Read more about Chess Kids: Tournaments, Business Model
Famous quotes containing the words chess and/or kids:
“What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“What is important for kids to learn is that no matter how much money they have, earn, win, or inherit, they need to know how to spend it, how to save it, and how to give it to others in need. This is what handling money is about, and this is why we give kids an allowance.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)