It all started in Colón, Panama.
These photos document the Gift of Chess Americas/Unidos Podemos Mas project that officially launched on August 9, 2024 in Colon, Panama where a total of 41,000 chess sets arrived to begin their distributions throughout all of the Americas. The photos feature the Gift of Chess Americas/Unidos Podemos Más trip which included Coach Russ Makofsky, Coach Shawn Martinez, and co-founders of Unidos Podemos Más, Kyle y Kaleb Lancman. The objective is to distribute the chess sets to 42 countries over the next year, starting with Panamá and following soon after with Peru, St. Lucia, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba and Argentina. The photos start by showing the first day where the team met at a warehouse to discover “miles” of boxes. They began to open them and to plan distribution. The rest of the photos show the following days when the team visited local schools, chess clubs, and even a shanty town where the children learn to play chess on the streets (using tables that are lent to the kids for a few hours by a lady who sells chicken soup) and guided by a marvelous organization called Chess Logistics.