His corn fiber body dances, his eyes blink when he speaks, he answers questions about sustainable development goals and he even knows German. That’s right Jovam, the robot that entered the Lima prison of Lurigancho, the most populated in Peru, to support teachers in the education of prisoners.
In this penitentiary center, which still bears the reputation of being one of the most violent in Latin America, around 1,225 inmates returned this week to face-to-face classes to resume their primary, secondary or technical courses, after two years anchored with self-instructional materials in the cells of this prison, where the internet is prohibited.
The return of the inmates to the classrooms coincided with the arrival of Jovam, orn biodegradable android made with recycled electronic waste that will serve as a “stimulus and didactic complement” to the education of inmates.
This is what its inventor, Walter Velásquez, a young rural teacher, passionate about technology and electronics, who at the worst moment of the pandemic already surprised the Peruvian educational community with the creation of Kipi, maintains to Efe. the first robot capable of speaking Quechua and traveling on horseback through the remote communities of Colcabamba, in the central Andean region of Huancavelica, to bring lessons to places where radio or television do not even reach.
a tall robot
Like “his little sister” Kipi, Jovam was conceived at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters, between the four adobe walls and a leaky roof that make up the creativity laboratory of the humble Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo school, in Tayacaja, a province that serves of export route for the cocaine that is produced in the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro Rivers (VRAEM), stronghold of the remnants of the Shining Path terrorist group.
This time, Velásquez created Jovam at the request of DVV International, a German NGO that has spent a decade promoting adult education in Peru, to be donated after its manufacture, which took seven months, to the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE), attached to the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.
The task of the robot was clear: to “motivate” and “accompany the learning” of the inmates of Lurigancho in this vital process for their resocialization.The director of DVV International in Peru, Walter Quispe, tells Efe, after recalling that in the Andean country there are nine million citizens over 15 years of age, 27% of its population, who did not complete basic education.
In the same sense, the coordinator of Art and Culture of INPE, Anibal Martel, expresses himself, who highlights that Jovam turned Lurigancho into the first prison in the world to have a robot behind bars.
A prison of more than 1,200 students
In this prison, which currently houses 9,028 prisoners, more than 10% of the 86,825 inmates in Peru, 410 inmates have basic education classes and another 815 technical-productive education of eleven different modalitieswhich include everything from hairdressing and textiles to electricity, carpentry and handicrafts.
In the classrooms located a few meters from the central corridor of Lurigancho, called Jirón de la Unión, like the main street of the historic center of Lima, Jovam automatically moves forward and backward, raises his arms and sings instructions typical of the national curriculum thanks to the software that integrates his brainconnected to its digital face through a kind of neural network.
“Jovam listens to the question (…), looks for the information in his database and provides it to you,” declares its inventor, who now wants to replicate the Lurigancho pilot experience in other prisons in the country.
Jovam’s presence immediately arouses the attention of the inmates of the prison, who approach him to listen to him speak with his metallic voice, halfway between astonishment and perplexity.
“It’s really wonderful. It’s cool (great) to have a media outlet that can provide us with information,” Joel Ramírez, a 29-year-old prisoner from Lima, who has been deprived of liberty for more than two and a half years, told EFE. Lurigancho, where he studies the last year of primary school.
The same enthusiasm pervades the director of DVV International in Peru, for whom the application of Jovam in prison ratifies that the inmates “have lost the right to their freedom, but not the right to education, which is a human right”. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
