Project Description

This project consists on a set of materials and services that attempt to introduce the game of go in the Catalan educational system. The materials are documents (bureaucratic and didactic) and beginners go sets; the services are mainly support activities and teachers training. This project has been designed to maximize the results obtained by a small group of volunteers in a "small" country, where availability and continuity of go players and teachers can not be guaranteed. To ensure this continuity, schools are offered the game of go as both a curricular activity and an after school program.

The Catalan Government official curriculum book (where all teachers must base their courses) has been analyzed and from there samples have been extracted for a wide range of subjects (maths, sports, history, geography, etc.) and ages using the game of go as a base. A set of documents containing proposals for courses is therefore offered. Besides the contents and procedures related to every course, another set of documents informs schools about the paradox that is how easy it is to learn the game go and how difficult it is to play it well, which leads to the conclusion that at a first stage, go develops on children attention and self-steem. The documentation also contains the bureaucratic documents used in schools to approve the contents of a course. Moyo also provides support activities and services to the Educational community. The support activities we offer are many:

- Training "standard" teachers into the game of go and the Yasuda-Shigeno teaching method.

- Giving lectures and presentations in any forum we are invited to. This year we have attended a sports symposium and the Board games in Academia colloquim, with Yuki Shigeno 2-dan. She also attended all the centres where go is being taught.

- Arranging gatherings. For the first time in years we have arranged a National youth and children tournament, which gathered 60 players from 3 different towns and 6 different schools. As a consequence of the apperance in local press of this event we have been requested to teach go in several schools. This year we expect to have young players from southern France in our tournament.

- Doing ourselves the actual teaching of children in after school programs.

- Personalized training and mentoring of children. For those children who wish to play more than in school we offer personalized training. We also expect to travel to the EYC. We have attended Cannes and Prague, we expect to go to Cannes this year.

Objectives

- introduction of go in schools, both as a curricular subject and an after school program

- set up a permanent framework of go promotions without being very dependant on the availability of go players. This is important in a small go community like the one in Barcelona.

- have a growing number of children who play go regularly

- provide support activities to schools and teachers willing to teach go to their students

- ease the bureaucratic work of teachers by providing the documents they need to introduce go in their centres

Realisation

The project started by Moyo is just starting. Most of the initial objectives have been accomplished, but now it is the time of growing and stabilizing. This means increasing the number of schools and towns where go is played. It is also desirable to increase the percentage of schools where go is offered as a curricular subject. Nowadays our services are even being offered through educational organisations who provide educational resources to schools. These organizations include an educational resources centre in the city of Barcelona, and an after school activity provider in the city of Sabadell. We have started positive exchanges with the Education department of the Barcelona Municipality.

Resources

The resources used by our project are not very high. However, in the initial phase we have used some extra work to set up the environment.

Manpower:

- concept and idea : 10 h

- preparation of documents : 40 h

- attendance to demos and lectures : 400 h (during 4 years)

- web page : 50 h

Financial resources:

- setting up : 200 euro

- catalonia go children championship : 600 euro

- visit of Yuki Shigeno : 500 euro

- travel to Prague's EYC : 400 euro

Until now all of these expenses have been covered by donations of the members of Moyo but the Spanish Go Association has committed to finance a part of our expenses

Possibilities to copy this project

We believe this project is perfectly portable to other countries. There is only the need to adapt the contents of the documents to the particularities of the destination Education system. All the documents and ideas we have used are available at our web site in catalan, english and spanish. We would also be happy to provide help and support to people willing to implement a similar project somewhere else.

Contact information

Moyo Go Institute

Address : Club d'escacs Vulca. c/ Julia Portet 15, principal

Postal address : PO box 33093, 08080 Barcelona (Spain)

Email address : imoyo@imoyo.org