Chess In Schools in Israel - A progress report

Mr. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
FIDE President

Chess In Schools in Israel - A progress report

Dear Mr. President,

Since your visit to Israel and your very important and crucial meeting in Jerusalem on December 19th 2010 with Mr. Shoshani the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Education a substantial progress has been done in the project that has become one of the priority projects of the Israel Chess Federation.

Your actual financial support enabled us to overcome several common bureaucratic obstacles.

Detailed negotiations with the Ministry officials have ended by signing an official contract between the Chess Federation and the Ministry of Education. Following that contract we met with local municipalities (all of them in the periphery) in order to decide where to start the chess in school project which was defined –during the 1st year - as "pilot project" (it was agreed that based on the success of the "pilot", the project will be tripled during the 2nd year).

Due to the importance of the project, the Managing Director of the Israel Chess Federation and a special skilled project manager are running the project.

During 2011- 2012 school year the project will be operated among pupils of the 2nd grade in 10 local municipalities all of them are in the periphery. Among the 10 municipalities, 3 are Arab municipalities (1 in the south among the Beduines-the project there already started and has received compliments due to its uniqueness and the unprecedented phenomena and 2 in the north of the country).

In several municipalities we have started our activity by training special chess instructors (many of them are students in the universities).

Now while the holidays season among the Jewish population in Israel is over we shall start our activities in the classes (among the non Jewish we already started). November 6th was set up as the official opening day of the Chess in Schools project. The chess lessons will last until the end of the school year on June 30th 2012.

Altogether we shall teach chess in 120 2nd grade classes - that will be considered by the Ministry of Education as "pilot" .

Dear Mr. President, we are very proud that together with you and the Ministry of Education we are able to run such an important project.

We are looking forward to enlarging the scope of the project with Fide and the Ministry of Education (that based on the success of the pilot has already committed itself to triple the project).

Thank you again, Mr. President, for your initiative and support.

Yours Sincerely,

Yigal Lotan, Adv
General Manager

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