After a year with complexities and challenges in the context of the pandemic, 2021 finds us specifying new training instances and the strengthening of the University Rooms in the different penitentiary units.
From the Socio-Educational Direction in Contexts of Confinement, we went through the previous year with complexities and challenges in the context of the pandemic, which made us deploy different strategies to accompany the educational trajectories of university students in contexts of confinement. Sanitary conditions made it possible at the beginning of this year to enter penitentiary units more frequently, being able to resume activities in person.
Consequently, this year 2021, finds us specifying new training instances and the strengthening of the University Rooms in the different penitentiary units. The training instances correspond to the Integration Cycle into the University Experience and the Specific Skills Courses.
The Cycle of Integration into the University Experience, for its part, began its delivery in three penitentiary units - No. 3, No. 5 and No. 16 - with the objective of promoting a training space where students can acquire academic, cognitive and practices around the experience of insertion into higher education and at the same time build a space for dialogue and critical discussion about collective and singular educational trajectories. This cycle has its own workshop format accompanied by a series of thematic talks, such as Human Rights, Cooperatives, Gender, Institutional Violence, etc. Such activities are coordinated by teachers and students from our work team, as well as by guest teachers.
On the other hand, the delivery of the Specific Skills Courses began, a format that we have been implementing for several years and which aims to provide students in confinement contexts with an instance of training and training framed at the higher level. In penitentiary unit No. 6 the Introduction to Cultural Management Course is carried out and in penitentiary unit No. 11 the Communication, Philosophy and Audiovisual Production Course is carried out; and the Garden Management Course. These courses are articulated respectively with the Work Center on Cultural Practices and Experiences of the UNR Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Extension and Liaison Secretariat of the Faculty of Political Science and RR.II, the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences and the Orchards Program of the UNR Extension Secretariat.
Furthermore, we have been working for four years now - from the Education in Prisons Program of the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations and from the Socio-Educational Directorate in Contexts of Confinement - the formation of University Rooms in the already mentioned penitentiary units, with the objective to have a physical space that allows not only to organize the activities linked and articulated by the UNR, but also to enhance the access possibilities of those who are deprived of their freedom and wish to continue with educational trajectories. In this sense, we have been able to create two new university spaces, in prison units No. 11 and No. 16, which have the equipment and internet connectivity necessary to facilitate access to materials and classes for the different university careers, these They are added to the university rooms already existing in penitentiary units No. 3, No. 5 and No. 6. The materialization of these university rooms is possible through joint work with the Penitentiary Service of the Province of Santa Fe and the coordination with the Coordination of ICT Directorates of the General Secretariat of the UNR, which equipped five computers for this purpose.
* By Julieta Cuevas (From the Education Directorate team in the Context of Confinement)