Tunde Onakoya: Using chess to provide education and mentorship to children in African slums

welcome to another founder wisdom podcast we have a special guest with us today tunde Daniel onakoya he is founder at chess and slums Africa really cool organism because for those that those that follow you you know that I like chess I am not good at it I am an oscillating 800 900 a thousand at my best think the highest I've got is like a thousand one hundred

uh rating on chess.com uh tunday on his end she's a national um champion and he's rated 2000 uh 400 or something like that so basically it's fair to say that I I don't I don't even think he's 2.4 times better than me it must be like five to ten to fifteen times better and I would estimate my chances of winning against him at 0.002 percent um by the way today we're gonna cover the his company uh his non-profit chess in slums Africa but next time we're gonna schedule a game so that you can see what I'm talking about here I'm not kidding like chess is is more than guts you know I play speed chest um and I practice my God decisions I actually stop so I'm I'm I'd be quite Rusty which would be

even sadder but chess is very very cerebral it's about memorizing plays and yeah tunde definitely has more of these mental maps in his brain than mine so let's see how it goes next time this podcast is brought to you by potpire.com if you want to start scale be invited to podcast that's my boss podcasting agency if you want to meet cool folks like tunde uh talk business

with them talk um helping people talk chess that is the way to do it you can grow your network as well uh have masterminds like I do and yeah let's hope that I keep that with tunde here I really think that we can make something cool here and finally podcast yeah create leads and generate uh clients they can even be used for that potbelly.com can you say

a little hello tell us a bit more about yourself and just in slum Africa uh hi Charles thank you so much for having me and I honestly don't think you're a bad player you know uh every master was also beginner right right and if you really improving your return right uh I've I I've come to learn that people don't necessarily get better by playing chess you know

um obsessively right you really don't learn much by just playing you know repetitively right you actually learn more by studying and understanding you know Theory and you know basic principles I think that you know it stays with your knowledge that you gain from studying you know stays with you um so yes I'm excited for a fun match and uh let's see how it goes um again thank

you fun for you no I mean the people that will beat me hands down and 100 games probably won't be able to win one you know so chess releasing levels I mean there's Magnus Carlsen the world champion that is you know eons ahead of everyone else so um again my name is Julian okoya I'm a national master of Chess in Nigeria I'm from Lagos Nigeria I'm 28 years old and I'm the founder and convener of Chess and slums Africa so chasing slums Africa is a non-profit organization that uses the game of chess as a tool right to help children living in impoverished communities get access to education mentorship and Technology it was founded in five years ago and uh like the general idea behind even using chess as a tool to exchange an intervention and

slum communities you know really does stem from my own personal story because I grew up in Islam as well you know in a place in Lagos Nigeria called and um I was out of school for a number of years but chess you know really did change my life it gave me an opportunity to find myself and now I like to think of it I like to think about the work that I do with chest and slums as doing the same thing for other children like me so they can also get you know a chance at education right so chess is the means to those ends not the end in itself because we're not training them to become Masters I mean some of them going to be exceptionally talented but the goal really is to give

them a beginning education and help them be the best they can be I love chess I'm started in primary school I was my school champion and yeah I pretty much stopped after that but chess taught me a bunch of things you know and taught me to be competitive it taught me to think ahead Soul planning it helps me memorize move it helped me stayed poised under a

lot of stress and I've even restarted playing chess not so long ago like I told you with chess.com and it was my favorite toilet sport nowadays after a stressful day I was just chilling on the toilet playing uh chest and I played speed chest and I I thought it would improve my co decisions and it did but I kind of gave up on all games nowadays because

I'm and I didn't like like the the gamification and the serotonin brought to my brain I felt it was like an addiction it was like so fun but I still think it has humongous uh mental benefits especially for young kids I would guess in the in the slums the life is hard um a chess game uh is somewhat affordable right you can and they can entertain themselves

learn some moves become great students of the game and hopefully that that consistency that habit that discipline of constantly practicing can waterfall into other aspects of their lives and potentially even bring them out of the Islam so what uh what is the the typical scenario at play here and what skills can chess bring to these kids that they can um transfer into their own lives and improve

their lives all right thank you so um you know chess is such an interesting game I mean it's a board game and you know I remember uh you know a friend of mine used to say that or watching people play just like watching paints dry on the wall you know it isn't of much interest to people that do not play the game or do not understand the rules of the game and a lot of people have those wrong perceptions are always too complex it's too complicated it's still hard to learn to start abroad you know but the truth is anyone can learn to play chess right and it's very simple to learn yes it is complex and can get complex especially when you're getting to points where you need to master a lot of patterns

you know start delving into like the much deeper intricacies of the game right but just like earning learning Endeavor any Endeavor in life right it does require a lot of hard work and commitment right so chess you know is uh is a highly server broken right but the beauty of it isn't just in a lot of those cognitive benefits that it has right I mean there's Empirical

research like gross dendrites you know both sides of the brain you know it helps you really understand you know strategy in a very practical way right it helps you you know improve memory concentration Focus so a lot of the discipline that is learned you know in that process you know it stays with one and for me personally one of the most important things chess has really taught

me right it's the you know understanding of delayed gratification right the power focused thoughts and I can see for a fact that you know I've learned more from chess than than I ever did you know for college or from school even it has sort of become my philosophy of you know you know my life philosophy even so in the context of what we do with Justice films

and for the children that live in this Advantage disadvantaged communities you know there's a different Essence to it right and this is why you know it is important to me and I like to say that it is just so much more than a game right it is an identity and for the children that live in poverty and extreme poverty in the slums that have no education that

have no food that you know that have become victims of their parents poverty right one thing then that is a silent consequence of that Poverty of that situation is it will never get to know what they can become right they will never get to live out that potential right most of us have had the privilege of Education of good parents you know having basic amenities structure but

for millions of children in poverty they will never get that so the idea really was teaching them chess as a way to give them that sense of agency that identity right that they can also be thinkers that they can be intellectually inclined right that they can gain ability to do something and that's the beauty of trust when you work hard at it you see results like in

real time right so being able to just like change the entire premise rather than oh children in poverty from Africa that suffering like this is a child despite all of this now has the capacity to play chess and be good at it right some of the kids that we've trained have become Champions you know and a lot of that has you know even reflected in their academics

in their confidence right because now they have their own identity they have a skill right that gives them that sense of belonging that they belong somewhere right and this is again this is the the consequence of poverty it goes beyond just not having money or being hungry is that there's no sense of self there's no agency right you're uh defined by your circumstance only and that's the

only life you get to live so being able to teach the kids chess has helped us to achieve that Beyond even the cognitive benefit because the cognitive benefit for a child why their thoughts are still forming is incredible right they begin to learn how to think critically they begin to learn how to think creatively right and that is education education is the capacity for thought so teaching

them chess is a way to give them education but more importantly it's a way to help them build the confidence that they need you know to face challenges right and all of this really does accumulate in helping them find a community and find a place in the world and that is a global one because chess you know is a global sport that is played and respected by

people from all walks of life so there are no disparities it doesn't matter whether you're old or young what matters is your ability and you know teaching chess to children in those places it reflects that and it gives them the confidence that they need um to Triumph in other aspects of their lives right tell me about a day in the life and slums Edition so what does

a day in the life look like because obviously I've never lived there you've you've been there as a kid so what would that look like yeah so the reality there in the you know in the ghetto in the slums is uh uh the very the very lack of basic amenities you know clean water um sometimes um you know out of school children right the Millions for example

in Nigeria there are over 20 million children that are out of school who can afford to be in school right and you know it's a really sad situation right because you know Africa has the highest you know illiteracy rate so and the world is constantly evolving so there's that you know irons of children out of school that are getting involved in guns you know and all these

other vices drugs you know criminal activities right because it's basically no way for them to discern they don't have an education right and there's very little guidance and mentorship right so it's a lot of that a lot of vices um like a lot of hunger right there's no food you sometimes children are terribly malnourished so even their brains don't go through the usual like cognitive developments that

it should the nutrition they should get from the food on you know they miss out on all of those benefits right because they were born into this disadvantaged situation in this community where you know um there's very there's there's a lack of resources there's a lack of infrastructure a lack of basic amenities and one of the slums we work in for example is Marco it's the largest

Philippine scum in the world so in this place uh people live on wooden stilts on black water so the water looks really black almost like seaweed just smelly it defecates in there they bathe in there and they still drink water from there right so it's a lot of Health you know hazards even right but they don't know any better so most of the residents are official man

it's a fishing village where the paddle on kennels and they live right on the Lagoon there across the Lagoon on water right so it's a very very sad sad situation right because uh you know resources are very limited and uh you know a lot of people are missing out on that so it's extreme poverty in a way that is almost unimaginable right so this is like the

situation this is the circumstance right and this is why you know initiatives like these are important right so we don't just let the single story of the slums Define the people that live there right Islam is just a place it doesn't Define the people that live there the people that live there are the real treasure it's the real Capital right and the surrounding circumstances can change if

you can Empower those people and give them the right access well if I would drink that water I would probably die and that's the reality yeah first few weeks you you mentioned um victim of your parents poverty I found that really intriguing can you tell me more about that right so think about the birth Lottery the ovarian Lottery right uh you're born randomly into you know you

don't get to decide where you're born you're either born white or black or you're born in Europe you're born in Africa whatever right you don't get to choose that it just happens and you find yourself in this place so uh the sad thing is you know a lot of people will not get to win that ovarian lottery so they get born into poverty into extreme poverty right

and I think this really speaks to uh our um our ability to be more empathetic as a society right because for most of us you know we've been shooting by that privilege that we were born into a maybe a wealthy family or a family that can at least give you the very basic things right there are millions of other people that were born into different scenarios circumstances

all together because they didn't win that Lottery of death right so it is important that you know at the intersection of our own privilege and in another person's oppression right another person's disadvantage that is where we find real opportunities to pay it forward for people like that right so I think the illnesses in society the almost is on the privileged ones right to become conduits right and

be able to give especially the children that have lost you know the lottery of birth so you them some Equitable you know opportunities right we should be able to create an equitable future that includes all of them too right because like I said when a child you know loses the uh that Lottery that ovarian Lottery right they're born into a situation that they cannot change to be

so hard to break out of that cycle imagine you're born to two illiterate parents in a village you know somewhere deep deep deep deep where there's no internet where there's no there are no schools there's no clean water you know you have to walk several miles for the farm and work hard in the Sun and that is the only reality you'd ever know because we we're product

of our immediate environment right so how do you even expect that child to have dreams Beyond those confines it is impossible you can't say oh believe in your dreams because the dreams are confined to the reality that they know in that place so they can only aspire to maybe be a farmer a local farmer or whatever it is that they've seen so the only way to really

expand you know their imagination is to show them a world that is much bigger than that right to help them see that oh this is the potential you have and it can be bigger than this place right and you must understand that sometimes you know the place where you're born is not where you belong right you belong where you think you belong so I think all of

these things I I feel deeply is our responsibility as a society right to bridge those gaps and I know this world because I was also born into a situation like that but just give me a Lifeline the first time I ever left my community was because we went for a tournament that was also the first time I ever saw a computer you know that was the first time I saw a lot of things I saw high-rise buildings and that helped me aspire to be more right so despite losing the luxury of birth and not being born with a silver spoon you know I could have greater aspirations because you know I had seen that or there was success that was better than this and I could aspire to those levels of success even right so

this is my entire understanding right of you know children being born into a situation that they can't change and they become victims of that situation right so when they become victims of that situation which is their parents poverty the only scripts they get to act out is that script that life has given them you know true birth and you know it takes a lot to come out

of that you know without help right let's book a round two uh we'll play chess that time because I have way more questions for you like delay gratifications like how can we bring internet to Africa and how and what is the typical scenario to a kid in Islam does he turn to crime and so forth so I have a bunch of um questions additional questions for you

until then where can we find out more about you today oh there's a lot just Google turned on acquire or chasing slums uh there's a lot of content but for chess and slums as an organization we have a website interesting slums africa.com uh we're on Twitter we are on Facebook we're on LinkedIn uh on Instagram as well me personally I spend a lot of time sharing my

thoughts on Twitter so you can follow me on Twitter underscore OD Instagram TuneIn a lot of videos you know especially about our impact stores the children that you know we've helped find a place in the world again just use internets you know so um you can read a lot of the stories and we really hope it does give people something new to believe in host the founderwisdompodcast.com that was tuned date Daniel