Third WSCF All Girls Chess Camp a Success
By Ben Wong / In Camps / January 8, 2014 at 4:31 pm
By Anjana Murali
The third free all girls’ chess camp, Queen’s Game, was held on December 20-21, 2013 at Hickman Academy. Anjana Murali, founder of Queen’s Game and senior at Shorewood High School, decided to conduct this unique camp to encourage more girls to play chess, participate in chess tournaments, and to teach valuable life skills through 64 squares. The 30 girls who participated in the camp learned how to play chess, competed in a five round tournament, and received free snacks, lunch, t-shirts, medals, trophies, membership for chesskid.com, and tournament chess sets.
The main issue Anjana wanted to address through this camp was to remove the gender disparity that exists in chess as it is a male dominated sport. As a result, she decided to address this issue with a grassroots movement. By educating young girls about the discrimination the female population faces in this world, Anjana plans to sow the seeds of change early in young minds. During her introduction speech at the camp, she told all of the girls about the adversity the female population faces in real life. She also shared her experience of becoming a female chess champion, her struggles during her chess journey, and how she got motivated to learn chess to excel in this male dominated sport. She feels that her chess journey has made her a great leader, a top student, and a female chess champion in Wisconsin. Now, the boys at the chess tournaments look at her with a different opinion. By stating various examples of the gender double standard, she has prompted the girls into taking action.
Full article here.
Bravo!