About The Speaker
Tunde Onakoya
Tunde Onakoya is a national master of chess in Nigeria and the founder of Chess in slums Africa- A non-profit organization that uses the game of chess as a framework to teach academic skills, critical thinking skills and a lifelong love for learning to children living in impoverished communities as a way to help them reach their true potential. Tunde Onakoya is a passionate chess player and coach who strongly believes that chess can be wielded as a powerful developmental tool to change young lives and raise a new generation of intellectuals from marginalized communities. Chess has long been recognized throughout the world as a builder of strong intellects as it improves cognitive abilities, rational thinking, and reasoning of even the least promising children. Chess brings out latent abilities that have not been reached by traditional educational means. Chess promotes logical thinking, instills a sense of self-confidence, and self-worth improves communication and pattern recognition skills. It teaches the values of hard work, concentration, objectivity, and commitment. The organization has been training kids from low-income areas for over 2 years and has successfully trained more than 200 kids, some have gone on to win national and international chess tournaments. Chess in Slums currently has over 15 children from their academy on full ride educational scholarships. The chess in slums project has garnered a lot of international media attention and the success stories of some of the children from their chess academy in the slums of ikorodu Lagos have been featured on BBC, Al-Jazeera,Deutche Welle, AFP, MSN etc. The vision for the project is to expand their reach across impoverished communities in Africa and lead the revolution to transform Education and re-write a new narrative for the African child by empowering them with the right skills to succeed.