Project Ripple is an AI school inside Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, built and run from Austin by Geetesh Parelly, a high-school student.
Classes run in Jacques Morisho's internet café in the camp, over Starlink. Every day follows the same five steps: a warm-up game, an AI lesson, a soft-skills drill, work on the class's real-world project, and a written reflection. Lunch is paid for every day. Students learn ChatGPT, then Canva, then Sora, then Replit. They make posters, websites, animations and games, and they graduate only after passing a pre-test, a post-test and three graded tests: a poster, a website and a game.
The final project is not for a grade. Students interview young people in the camp, then plan, market and run a three-day mental-health workshop. More than 30 young people from the camp attended. The year ends with a showcase for families.
Year one ran from August 18 to September 12, 2025, with 7 students and 2 teachers. Geetesh paid for it with a loan from his school, Alpha School, and paid it back. Year two had 32 students and 5 teachers, and was paid for by Flowly, his AI automation agency. Three of the five teachers in 2026 were students in 2025, and they were paid to teach.
Most of the first seven students had never used a computer. Day one was a test of what they did not know yet.
Geetesh wrote the curriculum, trained the teachers on video calls and talked them through each week from 14,000 km away. It was not smooth: the internet dropped, Replit locked students out, and in the first week he was on calls with the teachers all day. The goals for what comes next are 100 students, more camps, and a course anyone can take online.
