Project Xeque Mate will benefit 448 people aged between 6 and 18

Preparing children, adolescents and young people for life, through practices that combine technology, sport and education. This is the focus of the Xeque Mate project, which will be launched by Instituto Ramacrisna, sponsored by Vale, through the Federal Sports Incentive Law, this Wednesday, May 25 at 10 am. The objective is to promote the sporting experience through robotics and chess workshops, benefiting 448 children and young people between 6 and 18 years old, in a situation of social vulnerability, and residing in Betim, in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte. The duration of the project will be 2 years.

The activities will be carried out at the FabLab Ramacrisna, a modern digital fabrication laboratory opened in April. With 500 m², the FabLab has the most advanced and modern technology and innovation, such as 6 3D printers, 5 virtual reality glasses and a CNC Laser Cut Router, 20 tablets, 15 computers, 22 notebooks and 8 lego kits for the practice of Educational Robotics. There are only 25 laboratories of this type in the whole country, three of them in Minas Gerais, all in the capital of Minas Gerais. This is the first in Brazil to operate in a Rural Area, in the Santo Afonso neighborhood, in Betim.

The Xeque Mate Project was designed with the aim of providing students with access to Educational Sports, practiced in the best education systems and in unsystematic forms of education, thus preventing lower-income young people from being excluded from the market due to lack of opportunity. The purpose is to achieve the integral development of the individual and their training for the exercise of citizenship and leisure.

According to the vice president of Ramacrisna, Solange Bottaro, the activity of inventing, programming, assembling and moving a little robot exercises logical reasoning, promotes collaborative work, data sharing and promotes interdisciplinarity. These are, she says, some of the infinity of pedagogical gains promoted by the workshops.

“Having fun with programmable kits, software, breadboards, wires, sensors, boards and motors, the generation of students doesn’t even suspect, but it starts an important turning point for the future. By becoming interested in the study of programming, these kids prepare the ground for their future insertion in the job market, which increasingly demands these skills”, analyzes.

Chess workshops also play a very important role in this process. According to Solange, “the learning and practice of chess represent not only an option for leisure and culture, but also a way to develop fundamental skills in the development of children and young people”, she observes. Among them, the power of concentration and logical reasoning, the creation of strategies to propose innovative solutions, the initiative for decision-making and persistence.