GEORGIA MORRIS

GEORGIA MORRIS –A LIVING LEGACY OF LOVE LIVED OUT

Georgia Morris, founder of Critical Thinkers•Problem Solvers•Readers (CPR) Chess Club leads a legacy of helping others, which includes leading young achievers in breaking records on the chess platform. “I am the least of the least” she proclaims. “You don’t have to be a big anybody to help somebody.” She believe God has given everyone no matter who they are the gift to help others that are less fortunate than others and she is proving that. Even though she did not know how to play the game, the volunteers that she gets to teach do know how to play it and are practically experts but most of them has never used that gift to teach others. They are grateful for the opportunity to mentor children and using chess as a platform to do it.

Ms. Morris was born in Dermott, Arkansas, and raised by her father (a single parent) along with seven older siblings. She graduated from Dermott High School and attended college in Monticello before starting her 41-year career with Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield. She is the proud mother of one son, who is a registered nurse.

Ms. Morris’s love and compassion for helping others developed shortly after her son start attending daycare at Hoover United Methodist Church (UMC), where she served several years on the Board of its’ non-profit, Better Community Developers (BCD), Inc. whose mission is to improve the quality of life for low-income, underserved children, youth, and families. Her endeavors include organizing yearly Vacation Bible School (VBS), establishing a Church School for the children, establishing a scholarship fund for high school graduates. Ms. Morris was known for her volunteerism and her ability to recruit volunteers from within and outside of the church for the many projects that Hoover Church and BCD led or sponsor.

In 2011, she met the then 7x Arkansas State Chess champion, National Chess Master Tony Davis, and explored with him benefits of kids learning the game. Upon learning that chess helps children become better thinkers, problem solvers, readers, more focused, to be respectful of others, to plan ahead and not jump to do the first thing that pops in their head, build self confidence and most of all teaches that every action has consequences rather good or bad so it teaches them to choose wisely, she immediately envisioned a community Children’s Chess Club that would benefit all children in the Church, neighborhood, community and throughout the city.

Ironically, when she was growing up, Ms Morris’ father, a single parent, taught each of his 8 kids checkers and played the game with them regularly. All the while he played the game he shared stories with them about his life and teaching them about life in general. It was the children one on one fun time with him. This she felt was a great opportunity to carry on her father’s legend, It was Ms. Morris intention of using the chess club as a platform to mentor children, helping them to be champions in life more so than on the chessboard. So her not knowing how to play chess did not matter to her so long as she could learn the basics of chess and be able to compare it to life and teach life skills.

While visiting Mosaic Church in 2012 and volunteering with a reading program ran by their children pastor in a low income apartment nearby, Ms Morris asked about starting a Chess Club there with the 6 kids she was mentoring and she was honest with them by telling them she did not know how to play the game, herself. Instantly, the God given vision became a reality when they said “yes.”

As the club begin to grow, she wanted the kids to get the opportunity to play with other kids in other tournaments. The only place was the LRSD where they were hosting tournaments under the Gifted and Talented (G/T) program. However these tournaments were only offered to kids participating in chess clubs in the LRSD schools. Ms. Morris was determined to get her kids in the tournaments and she did. The CPR Chess club which at the time were the only children focused chess club in Little Rock became the only outside team to play in the LRSD tournaments. Many of the team trophies and individual medals that they have won came from competing in those tournaments.

From 2012 to this date, CPR Chess organization has introduced, trained and mentor more than 1.000 plus children through this game of life. When the COVID pandemic hit, the Children’s Chess Club was able to continued virtual with online chess lessons, chess camps and tournaments with the help of National Chess Master Alex King who also held the 3rd highest rated standings in Tennessee. He had heard about our club and volunteered to be the virtual coach for our Advanced class and our Advance students were in charge of teaching virtual chess to our beginners and intermediate chess kids. Our online team, the Mosaic Rookie Knights have been battling it out against 13 different teams across the USA and abroad.

In 2021, the CPR Chess Club kids were selected to represent the USA and compete in an International online Chess tournament that consisted of 8 other countries with a total of 30 clubs competing within those countries and our club won 1st Place.

Ms. Morris chess phenomenon champions include the then sixteen year old William Donham who won the Arkansas State Championship title for 2022-2023, beating out 56 players who were more than twice his age. It was a 3 day tournament in which one of his games lasted 4 hours. To compete in this tournament, you must be a rated member of the United States Chess Federation.

CPR Chess Club has partnered with community centers, schools, libraries, and other organizations included the KWENI Chess Club located in West Africa to introduce and train more children in this beautiful game of life. Additionally, the CPR Chess Club host at least 6 scholastic tournaments per year at Mosaic Church and additional ones are hosted throughout the city. We now partner with several schools in Little Rock who are allowing us to host tournaments in their facilities.

Benjamin Franklin, who was a chess player and an advocate of chess, said it best:

“Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chessboard; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life – that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems.”

Georgia Morris has an extensive list of awards and honors from prestigious organizations including the MLK lifetime Achievement Award. She recently received the NAACP Community service award.

Georgia attributes her success to God, and the efforts of many dedicated volunteers and sponsors who support the CPR Chess Club. Over the years, 1,000 plus children have been mentor utilizing Chess as the tool to do so.

For more information on the CPR Chess club go to http://www.vineandvillage.org. Our club is free to all and is ran by all volunteers, including herself. She also have an extension of the CPR Chess club in Pine Bluff ran by Laverne Tyler. If you would like to donate , please make donations through vine and village website and select chess club in the drop down box.

Sincerely yours,

Georgia Morris

CPR Chess Club Founder and Director

Phone: (501) 416-5348

Website: www.cprchessclub.org