Cover Story / Sports Outreach Institute
Today, Ivan, 21, is a freshman majoring in education at Busitema University in eastern Uganda. He is studying on a full scholarship reserved for students with top scores on their col- lege entrance exams. Ivan’s success story grew out of the missionary work of Sports
Outreach Institute, a Lynchburg, Virginia-based nonprofit organ- ization that uses sports—mostly soccer but also chess—to connect with youths in impoverished parts of the world in an effort to improve their lives. While
Sports Institute Outreach is perhaps best
known as the force behind the rise of Phiona Mutesi— the young Ugandan chess prodigy now known as the “Queen of Katwe”—its core work is less glamorous and often uncelebrated. It involves providing youth
pete in an international chess tournament. It’s more so the fact that the organization paid his secondary school fees, which ultimately enabled him to take college entrance exams and score well enough to earn a government scholarship. “Since I got the chance to study, I was like, ‘I have to use this chance very well, such that it makes those who have given the school fees to me very happy,’” Ivan said. To appreciate what it means to finish secondary school in Uganda, consider the fact that Ugandan children only attend school for an average of 61
⁄2
“You can get people to play soccer when two weeks ago they were trying to kill each other. Chess is the same way.”
with the necessities of life—food and occasionally shelter—as well as helping them to get into and through school and, when they are receptive to it, gaining a scripture-based focus in their lives. The cross on the king’s crown, then, takes on added signifi- cance for Sports Outreach Institute, where the sports of soccer and chess serve as mere means to a much greater end. “It’s such an innocent introduction. It overcomes a lot of cul- tural barriers,” said Rodney Suddith, president of Sports Outreach Institute, or SOI, referring to sports in general. “You can get people to play soccer when two weeks ago they
were trying to kill each other,” Suddith said, recalling how SOI was one of the first organizations to do work in Rwanda follow- ing the genocide in 1994. “Chess is the same way.” “For children who come from situations where they are in sur- vival mode, the strategic nature of chess holds a lot of appeal,” Suddith said.
“It’s amazing how they pick (chess) up and how aggressive they
are with it,” Suddith said. “Sometimes that gets them into trou- ble. As they learn strategy, it’s very sophisticated, but they take to the game really well.” Indeed, in 2009—five years after he got involved with SOI—Ivan, along with Phiona, flew to Juba, Sudan to represent their coun- try in Africa’s International Children’s Chess Tournament. They returned undefeated with gold medals. “I was the best on board one,” Ivan recalled. What exactly that means in the world of competitive chess is not easy to judge from afar. Ivan has no official FIDE rating, although records show he wins more than he loses. Specifi- cally, Ivan has won seven games, drew five and lost four, his FIDE online profile shows. Irrespective of the level of competition, the tournament expe- rience forever changed Ivan’s life. It was the first time, for instance, that he flew in an airplane, enjoyed a plate of fish all to himself, and slept in his own bed in an air-conditioned hotel room. “They could not imagine they lived the lifestyle they had been in for a week,” Ivan’s coach, Robert Katende, said in an interview via Skype. “They couldn’t believe it. It was so encouraging.” The thing that motivates Ivan to do well in school is not so much the fact that SOI treated him like a grandmaster when they flew him to The Sudan and put him up in a nice hotel to com-
average length of school attendance is 43⁄10
years. At least that is according to the Africa Learning Barome- ter, a new instrument developed by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organiza- tion based in Washington, D.C. Among the poorest 20 percent of children in Uganda, the Africa Learning Barometer shows, the years, although the CIA’s
The World Factbook puts the “School life expectancy” of stu- dents in Uganda at 11 years.
In 2007, Uganda became the first Sub-Saharan nation to offer universal secondary education. Still, public education in Uganda is not truly “free,” says Justin W. van Fleet, a fellow at the Cen- ter for Universal Education, Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution. “There’s a whole host of hidden costs associated with public edu- cation,” such as school uniforms and supplies, van Fleet told Chess Life during the question and answer session of a recent Brook- ings forum titled “The State of Learning in Africa.” “Even when (education) is free, there are costs associated with it that are prohibitive to those who are marginalized,” van Fleet said.
And when children do attend school in Uganda, the quality
remains “questionable,” according to a recent research paper on Ugandan secondary education put out by the National Gradu- ate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), in Tokyo, Japan. Robert Katende, the SOI coach in Kampala, was even more blunt in his critique of the state of Ugandan schools. “The teachers never show up, they don’t have any follow-up, and every year (students) all have to pass whether they have been studying or not,” Katende said. “So actually it is useless to have any child in the government school.” Except when it’s not. Ivan is the first student from SOI to attend college. “Ivan is the pioneer,” Katende said. A different level of uncertainty was brought to his educational
future.
SOI is accustomed to paying primary and secondary school fees for its students. College tuition, however, would have been an entirely different thing.
“That’s why when he qualified for the government scholarship,
it was a great relief,” Katende said. “Otherwise we were saying maybe that (high school) is the end.” The fact that SOI uses its limited economic resources to help
kids halfway around the world get into and through school is a story in and of itself. As far as nonprofits go, SOI isn’t exactly flush with cash. The
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