RookAI

RookAI is a bridge that uses chess to connect teenage girls all around the world. It helps teach them vital skills and knowledge to help them succeed in life through chess. RookAI is an online platform for learning and playing chess, along with a place to talk about your problems and dreams. Chess can also be used in tandem with other subjects to help develop essential knowledge. Chess+ is a variation on the classical game of chess. Chess+ has the same rules for chess, however, before every move, you have to answer a question based on the monthly topic. There will also be a monthly topic in the forums. The monthly topic can be voted upon by the users in each area. This will allow small groups to talk together from all over the world, helping them share their hopes and dreams.

For young women, isolation and disconnect are devastating barriers to overcome. Without a comfort zone, it can be hard, if not impossible, for them to learn enough to live a good life. “In Samoa, three in every five adolescents reported making a suicide attempt, demonstrating the urgent need for action, the level of suicide attempts in adolescence was higher among girls (17.4 percent) than boys (16.3 percent).” As of 2013, 31 million girls of primary school age out of school. “Of these 17 million are expected never to enter school. There are 4 million fewer boys than girls out of school….”  In Nigeria, there are almost five and a half million girls out of school; in Pakistan, over three million, and in Ethiopia, over one million girls not attending school. The lack of education for these girls will affect them for their entire lives. “Almost a quarter of young women aged 15-24 today (116 million) in developing countries have never completed primary school and so lack skills for work. Young women make up 58% of those not completing primary school.” These women will not have a chance to help contribute to the GDP and workforce of their countries.

RookAI, a free-to-join website bringing together young women facing learning challenges on their journey. RookAI is a bridge that uses chess to connect young girls all around the world, helping teach vital skills and knowledge, building community, and a safe place to help them succeed in life-- all through the game of chess. RookAI is a place to talk about your problems and dreams in a safe environment. We at RookAI have developed a new approach, the Chess+ concept + App, integrating chess with relevant subjects, like math and science, giving girls a  way to fix their local problems, such as accessing clean water, protecting against infection and disease, growing food, and acquiring the skills and confidence to advocate and stand up for themselves. Chess+ has the same rules as chess, however, before every move, you have to answer a question based on the monthly topic. Our website platform will teach kids about chess. There will also be a monthly topic in the forums to talk about. These topics can be user-submitted, helping bring kids from all over the world together and uniting them over RookAI to talk about their local problems.

RookAI advocates and assists teenage girls from developing countries to find a safe haven, nurturing, and helping them to chase their dreams and giving them the tools to lead a better life. It will impact their lives by giving them a way to learn both chess and other essential subjects along with providing a platform to help them to express and help them actualize their dreams. This will provide a meaningful experience and will make a strong positive impact on their lives. RookAI will help us acquire skills to better their lives. RookAI also will have a forum, where girls from all over the world can talk about a monthly topic. This helps bring girls together through a common feature and in this way world understanding and empathy can become a reality.

By reducing barriers, RookAI checkmates isolation, lack of equal access, and a comfort zone. The problem relates to the Challenge because young girls around the world do not have the proper education. RookAI will counter this inequality by teaching them chess and knowledge (Chess+), giving them a place to find solutions for their local problems, while building their self-confidence to chase their dreams. Our target population is girls that are out of school and need proper education.

There are many websites where you can play chess, like chess.com. However, what makes RookAI different from all of these websites is Chess+ and the monthly forum topics, and the group camaraderie. Chess+ uses other topics with chess to give a better understanding of that topic while making learning fun and rewarding. The topic for Chess+ will change monthly, and study material will be posted on the website a month in advance. The AI will use matches to help find their weaknesses and suggest drills or videos help them get better. The forums will be used to bring together girls from all over the world, along with giving them a chance to ask and receive help for their problems. The monthly topic can be voted upon by users, giving girls a chance to ask questions about problems they have, whether it is a certain math topic they do not understand or a way to find clean water nearby. RookAI is innovative because it uses chess to help bring kids together and teaches them other subjects, like math and science while solving real-time problems.

The core technology of our solution is the RookAI website (www.rook-ai.com) and Chess+. This website, with its forums, acts as a safe and comfortable zone where girls can learn and share their problems with kids across the world without worrying about any consequence. The forums will connect people across the world life and in real-time. With the addition of a monthly topic that can be submitted by users, the forums can be used to talk about their local problems and get solutions from kids all over the world, in tandem with Discord to let them talk and communicate with their friends from all over the world from developing regions. Chess+ uses chess with other subjects to help better their lives, giving them away to learn both chess and other topics that can be vital to their health, well-being, and their future careers. Chess+ will be an app, letting girls learn with or without internet access, making it more flexible to their needs. At RookAI, we believe that every girl around the world should have the same resources and ability to learn.

Chess has been proven to enhance memory and verbal skills, helping build dendrites in your brain, and exercising both sides of your brain. Learning chess at a young age helps these dendrites grow, letting you learn better. Chess helps teach problem-solving, pattern recognition, creativity, planning, and foresight, which are vital skills to learn. The forums will help girls build bonds, through chess, building lasting friendships with kids who would otherwise never meet. There is a similar organization that uses chess to help better lives, Chess for Humanity https://chessforhumanity.org. However, ChessforHumanity only does in-person events, while RookAI is a website, letting girls access it whenever they want. At RookAI, we use chess to better the lives of girls around the world. By using the Harkness Method to provide help for their local problems, we also teach our members critical and creative thinking to better their future, giving them a safe and comfortable zone to build lasting friendships with girls from all over the world.

I believe that everyone should have equal access to education. Chess has been proven to enhance memory and verbal skills, helping build dendrites in your brain, and exercising both sides of your brain. Learning chess at a young age helps these dendrites grow, letting you learn better. Chess helps teach problem-solving, pattern recognition, creativity, planning, and foresight, which are vital skills to learn. Chess+ Concept and App will use chess to help teach girls important subjects that they would otherwise not gain full mastery of. It can help them develop the self-confidence to learn whatever they want, whenever they want, without any limits or barriers stopping them. The forums will help girls build bonds, building lasting friendships with kids who would otherwise never meet, through chess. Using the Harkness Method with the monthly topics, helping build critical and creative thinking skills, while giving girls a way to ask and receive help for their problems, without fear of judgment or prejudice. Chess is one of the oldest games on Earth. We should learn from this long-lasting game and use those strategies to better all of our lives now and in the future. I believe that chess should be a game that all should enjoy, not just the ones that have access to a chessboard.

Right now, we are contacting investors and community activists like Unicef, World Bank, and the Future of Sustainable Investing. In one year, we will have around three to four groups actively using RookAI to learn and connect with each other. In five years, we will be a non-profit that spans almost every continent.

While we are making the RookAI website and App fully functional, we will reach out to investors and community activists like Unicef (https://www.unicef.org/), World Bank (https://www.worldbank.org/), and the Future of Sustainable Investing (https://www.fsicon.com/) to partner with us and help us reach girls in developing countries and all over the world. 

Some barriers that currently exist for RookAI to fully accomplish our goals is the lack of technology, money, and the prejudices against women learning. Making an app just for our new feature Chess+, can help give kids the head start to learning, while not relying on internet access. For RookAI to work, girls need to have a way to safely get access to a computer along with internet access to join our website. This requires a lot of money to acquire and transport the materials needed to get girls into RookAI. There are also prejudices against women learning, which can make joining RookAI hard for these girls and women.

RookAI plans to ask SpaceX and their satellites to give free internet access to the girls and women joining RookAI. This is why we need MIT Solve to invest in our idea, giving us the money to help give access and the computers needed for these young girls and women to log into RookAI. RookAI will show that the prejudices against women learning are unfounded, and will give these girls and women the ability to learn without fear or pressure, in a safe comfort zone.