Many youth in today’s digital age struggle to develop habits of good character, often drifting aimlessly in a polarized world where many fall victim to various addictions. The culture of instant gratification and the pervasive influence of social media, hinder their ability to build resilience and confront difficult challenges.
This project aims to strengthen an existing, innovative chess-based program that helps youth to discover their purpose and acquire value-based decision-making skills, growing their capacity to navigate hardships in a mature way.
With its theory of change grounded in the principles of attachment, identity, and belonging, the program is structured around 3 components:
1. Growing Character-Based Individuals: The Moving with Purpose (MWP) curriculum, uses chess to teach life values, purposeful living and enhance problem solving skills.
2. Developing Facilitators into Mentors: The Train-the-Trainer module grows mature mentors who embody the MWP values and guide participants in applying them to their context.
3. Cultivating Healthy Community: This module highlights the impact of group identity on character formation and decision-making, assisting participants to access or foster healthy communities.
The program achieved remarkable results in the founding community, but lacks the data to demonstrate its impact in other contexts. This project aims to test and refine the curriculum content, while adding additional delivery methods to ensure effective implementation in various settings.
The deliverables will focus on enhancing all three components, rolled out across at least 10 pilot sites in diverse contexts. An improved M&E framework will continuously measure effectiveness and facilitate improvement.
The project outcome is to show that the refined program content is relevant in different settings, supported by sufficient M&E data. The enhanced training modules will enable implementing partners to successfully adopt the program globally.
