ORION Latin-American Team Tournament (Under 18)

Project Description

Last year we held a pilot tournament online, the "ORION Latin-American Team Tournament (Under 18)", with participation of 12 teams (3 players per team) from Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico. The ORION Latin-American Team Tournament (Under 18), is an online event which pretends to be held annually, for teams of 3 Latin-American players each.
In our region there are local efforts in almost all countries to teach and spread Go to children, but there is little communication among them, which makes it hard to boost Go promotion and development. With internet we have a great opportunity to connect all those valuable human resources and surpass the barriers of distance and high costs of travelling on the Americas region. Our aim is to create a virtual platform where friendship ties and competition around Go is possible for youth but as well for teachers, since the spirit would be to share and improve our playing level and teaching methods.

Aim of the Project

Gather under 18 Latin-American players to compete in a serious tournament online each year, representing their club, school, academy, or national association. This way the adult players and Go teachers in Latin-America will be encouraged to begin or to continue the noble path of promoting Go among youth on their respective countries.

Means of the Project

Electronic devices, Internet, social networks.
Facebook event: www.facebook.com/events/659401730834245
Official site: iberogosub18.blogspot.mx/
OGS Tournament room: online-go.com/group/357
Friendly matches with korean dojang: badukacademy.co.kr/

Timeline

Each year:
August: Promotional material to the public, email invitations to all Latin-American national associations.
September, October: Register period and contact with Go teachers.
November: Players and teams confirmation period, play tournament.
December: The Latin-American winner team plays a friendly match with a Korean children team.

Geographic Extension

The online tournament is focused on children and youth at the Americas, but it will also be a platform to build new bridges between America and Asia since we will always look for a friendly online match for these regions at the end of the tournament.

Results

Latin-American players (under 18) will test their abilities with their counterparts from the continent. Go Teachers will be aware of their teaching methods’ strenghts and weaknesses, as a whole, the region would improve exchanging experiences.

Public Exposure

We will forward results information to each participant country so that they find the means to publish it locally. We will publish the results and report on Go related websites.

Human Resources

The team consists of Diego Albuja (Ecuador), Sebastién Montiel (Chile), and Siddhartha Avila (México), who spent 160 work hours on promoting, invitations, web page of the tournament, organization and coordination (registering, pairings, results, etc.)
Go teachers: Should conform the children teams, send registering information, be responsible of direct communication during the tournament.

Financial Resources

On-line Go Server sponsorship, hosting the tournament.
Gogameguru sponsorship, Badutktv subscriptions.

Perspective

Hold this tournament each year with the eventual participation of all the Latin-American countries with a Go National Association. In the near future, this event would even be a reference to have our youth team selection to represent Latin-America at international tournaments.

Wishes

Studying material and Go equipment is still hard to find within our region and in our common language (spanish), making it difficult to extend Go practice in the environments where our children are likely to be, such as libraries, schools, parks, museums, etc. This is the reason why we would use the resources to acquire Go material, equipment and online training for the outstanding teams and players from each country.

Additonal Comments

We would like to thank the organizers of the Worldwide Iwamoto Awards for receiving our entry.