Kenya is among the 30 countries that have qualified to participate in the first World\u00a0Chess\u00a0Para-Olympics 2020, a competition for people living with disabilities which will take place from July 28 to August 5 in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia.<\/p>\n
This is after Kenya embraced inclusivity by including tournaments for players living with disabilities and women.<\/p>\n
In 2019,\u00a0Chess\u00a0Kenya hosted the first Kenya National Championship for Persons Living with Disabilities and Queen’s tournament that target purely women.<\/p>\n
Currently, Kenya has over 100\u00a0chess\u00a0players living with disabilities and about 1000 women (majority in schools) participating in\u00a0chess.<\/p>\n
Chess\u00a0Kenya President Benard Wanjala who is currently at Abu Dhabi for FIDE congress revealed to the Standard Sports that he is confident this will go a long way to boost the morale of the players.<\/p>\n
“We started this program of integrating people living with disabilities and we have seen transformation among this special family. I am happy they will get the opportunity to interact with the world to showcase their talents. We call upon the ministry of sports and other well-wishers to support the team,” he said.<\/p>\n
Chess\u00a0Kenya Head of Women, physically challenged and other special groups Winnie Thitu welcomed the opportunity and called upon more persons living with disabilities to join the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an opportunity for us to fly Kenya\u2019s flag high at the world indoor games and am glad we are the first among the few countries to represent Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Regulations, 30 federations are entitled to participate in the FIDE\u00a0Chess\u00a0Olympiad 2020, Competition for Disabled.<\/p>\n
In Africa, Kenya will be joined by neighbors Uganda, Egypt, Zambia and Zimbabwe to form the five federations representing the Africa continent in the\u00a0Paralympics\u00a0come July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kenya is among the 30 countries that have qualified to participate in the first World\u00a0Chess\u00a0Para-Olympics 2020, a competition for people living with disabilities which will take place from July 28 to August 5 in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. This is after Kenya embraced inclusivity by including tournaments for players living with disabilities and women. In 2019,\u00a0Chess\u00a0Kenya hosted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":3549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,17],"tags":[1918,1917],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-sport","tag-world-chess-para-olympics-2020","tag-world-chess-paralympics-2020"],"yoast_head":"\n