Roshen’s Chess Academy offers free chess lessons and tournaments to Portland area kids

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Oregon Scholastic Player Roshen Nair started a new organization called Roshen’s Chess Academy to run the chess clubs at two non-profit organization’s locations (Chinmaya Mission Portland and HECSA). The Nair family is in the process of making Roshen’s Chess Academy a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit organization. The goal of the organization is to promote chess among kids in the Portland area. Roshen is trying to achieve this by providing “free” teaching lessons, “free” game analysis and “free” practice games. The club is also organizing NWSRS rated tournaments to prepare kids for the 2020 Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation (OSCF) state championship.

In little over a month, the club grew to 20 kids. There are another 6 kids currently in the waiting list. Roshen limited the size of the club to 20 so that the quality of the program is not compromised.

Roshen is extremely thankful for OSCF’s generous contribution of ten high-quality tournament graded chess sets. That was a huge encouragement and moral support to Roshen. Roshen used his tournament-winning money to fund the rest of the club needs (additional chess sets, chess clocks, demonstration boards, books, Chess training software, SwissSys tournament software, etc)

Free Chess classes and fundraising for the non-profit organizations

Roshen is doing three teaching sessions a month. Each session runs around 2 hours. Even though Roshen is not taking any fees, the students are encouraged to pay $5 donation per session to any of the following non-profit organizations (of their choice).

  • Boy Scouts of America (Troop 208 – Roshen is a member of this troop).
  • Chinmaya Mission, Portland (They let them use their facility to run the club activities).
  • HECSA (the backup facility to run the club activities).
  • CORD – USA.

In 3 months, Roshen’s Chess Academy raised over $1100 for those non-profit organizations.

Roshen’s goal for the next year is to prepare these 20 kids for the state championship tournaments and also raise $5000 for these non-profit organizations through donations.

Note: Roshen’s Chess Academy is not collecting any donations directly. They are just collecting the checks payable directly to those non-profit organizations.

Roshen’s Chess Academy quads tournaments:

Roshen’s Chess Academy started running OSCF state qualifier tournaments in August. They just had their first Quad tournament on August 17th with 16 players. All proceeds from the tournaments (minus operating expenses for trophies, medals, etc) will go to the following nonprofit organizations.

  • CORD USA
  • Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation (donations for OSCF will start in October). 

Roshen’s Chess Academy‘s goal for the next year is to raise $4000 ($2000 each for OSCF and CORD USA) from these tournaments.