A challenge they have never seen. A clock. No help.

This October in Lima, university students will sit down at a row of machines and receive a set of requirements revealed only when the timer starts. They will have a fixed window to build a working application using AI. Then they stand up and defend what they built to a panel of judges.

No coaching from the back of the room. No one allowed to speak to a competitor except the referee. Screens recorded start to finish.

This is not a class. It is a competition, and it is judged like one: on innovation, on whether the thing actually works, on the quality of the build, and on whether they can stand up and explain it.

Why this, and why now

Peru is full of students who can do this work and have never once been in a room where someone asked them to prove it. The tools are free. The talent is already there. What is missing is the room, the clock, and somebody willing to judge the result honestly.

JGM Innovation has worked in Peru for over a decade and has put more than 50 students through scholarships. We know how to find these students. This is the next thing we owe them.

Participation is earned

Competitors qualify. Nobody is handed a seat. Everyone who takes one has already shown they can do the work.

Our team built a training course, in Spanish and English, that walks competitors through building and improving an AI application from nothing. It exists already. Students are working through it before a single dollar of prize money is on the table.

What your gift actually buys

Twelve hundred dollars runs the entire event. Not a slice of it. All of it.

The venue and the machines. The internet the whole thing depends on. Meals. Judges. Certificates and the awards ceremony. The film crew that turns one day in Lima into something we can show the next cohort. And a 1,500-sol prize pool that goes to the students who win it.

One donor can fund a builder. Twenty-four donors fund the event.

JGM Innovation is a 501(c)(3) public charity. EIN 87-4083730. Your gift is tax deductible.

The JGM AI Hackathon in Lima Peru

Build with AI on the clock. Defend it to judges. Lima, Peru October 2026.