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Every so often on a Saturday morning, a founder from Silicon Jeri skips a full day of work to sit in a classroom in Manjeri, talking to kids about code. Nobody assigns this. No campus schedule lists it. It happens because a few people decided it was worth their time.
- Some Silicon Jeri founders and mentors teach or mentor at local schools on their own time, not as part of any official campus program.
- The visits are informal: a coding demo, a career talk, or just answering kids’ questions about what a startup actually does.
- Founders say it keeps them grounded and repays a town that gave them their first shot.
- The bigger effect may show up years later, in how local kids picture their own future options.
What This Volunteer Teaching Actually Looks Like
It is small in scope, and that is the point. A founder might spend one Saturday morning a month at a nearby government school, or drop in on an occasional afternoon when a teacher asks for help. There is no fixed curriculum. There is no attendance sheet tied to the campus.
Typically, it takes one of three shapes. A coding demo, where a founder shows students how a simple program works on a laptop, often something visual like a game or a small website. A career talk, where the founder explains what a workday at a startup looks like, in plain terms a twelve-year-old can follow. Or an open question session, where kids ask whatever comes to mind, from “how do you get an idea” to “do you need to be good at math.”
None of this replaces a real computer science class. It is closer to a guest visit, the kind any curious adult might offer a school near where they live. The difference here is who is showing up: people who build software for a living, sitting in Manjeri classrooms instead of somewhere far away.
Why Founders Give Up a Saturday for This
Ask around the campus and the reasons repeat themselves, even though nobody is coordinating the answer.
Staying grounded. Running a startup can pull a person into screens, deadlines, and investor updates for weeks at a time. A few founders say a morning with school kids resets that. The questions are honest. Nobody is trying to impress anyone.
Giving back to the town that gave them a shot. Many people at Silicon Jeri grew up in or near Manjeri, or moved there because the campus made it possible to build a company without leaving Malappuram. For them, teaching for a morning is a small, direct way to return something to the place that made their own path possible.
Planting a longer seed. A few founders are candid that they are not expecting quick results. They are not there to recruit anyone next month. They are there because a kid who hears “you can build this from Manjeri” once, at age eleven, might remember it at nineteen, when a real choice is in front of them.
None of these reasons requires a program, a budget, or a sign-off. That is part of why it works. It stays personal, and personal things tend to survive longer than official ones.
One Founder’s Saturday, as an Example
To make this concrete, picture a composite, illustrative example, not a specific real individual. Call her Anjali Prasad, a founder of a small software company based at Silicon Jeri. Once a month, Anjali walks to a local government school ten minutes from the campus. She spends about an hour with a class of ten and eleven year olds.
She does not lecture. She opens her laptop, shows the class a simple app she is working on, and lets them break it. They change colors, they type in silly text, they watch what happens when something goes wrong. Then she answers questions for twenty minutes. Some are about code. Most are not. “Do you get scared your company will fail?” “What did you study?” “Is Manjeri a good place to do this, or should we move to a city?”
Anjali says she leaves those mornings more energized than most of her actual workweek. She is not paid for the visit, and Silicon Jeri does not track it. It is simply something she chose to keep doing.
Volunteer Teaching vs. an Official Program: What’s the Difference?
It helps to separate this personal habit from any structured outreach the campus runs. Here is the practical difference, in short.
| Volunteer teaching | Official outreach program |
|---|---|
| One founder’s personal choice | Organized by the campus or a partner |
| No fixed schedule or curriculum | Planned sessions with set goals |
| Happens because someone wants to do it | Happens because it is on a calendar |
| Depends on who is willing this month | Meant to continue regardless of who runs it |
Both matter. But they are not the same story. This piece is about the first column: the people who show up because they want to, not because a plan told them to.
What Kids Actually Get Out of One Hour
An hour with a founder will not teach a child to program. What it can do is smaller, and arguably more useful at that age.
- A face to put on the word “startup.” For many kids, tech founders exist only in videos about people far away. Meeting one from their own town changes that.
- Permission to ask basic questions. A ten year old rarely gets to ask an adult, without judgment, “what does a computer actually do.”
- A sense that the path is not closed off. Hearing “I started here too” carries more weight than hearing it from a stranger on a screen.
- Exposure to the idea that building things is a normal career choice, on the same footing as becoming a doctor, engineer, or teacher.
None of this shows up on a report card right away. That is the trade-off with this kind of volunteering. It is a long bet, not a quick one.
Why This Might Matter More in Five or Ten Years
The honest answer is nobody knows yet how much difference these visits make. Malappuram’s students are not short on ambition. What they have historically had less of is a nearby, visible example of someone from a similar background choosing tech as a career, and staying in the district to do it.
Silicon Jeri’s presence changes the backdrop a little. A founder who volunteers on a Saturday changes it a bit more, because it puts a real person, not just a building, in front of a child. Over years, as more kids grow up having met someone who builds software for work, the idea of studying computer science education or joining a company based at the campus may feel less like a leap and more like an option that was always there.
That shift, if it happens, will not be traceable to any single Saturday. It will be the slow result of many small ones, repeated without much notice, by people who never called it a program in the first place.
For more on how the campus connects with Manjeri’s younger students, see Silicon Jeri’s broader push to introduce Manjeri students to code before college. This kind of personal volunteering is also a good example of how the rhythms of small-town life, like wedding season, shape work at Silicon Jeri, since both show the campus adjusting to Manjeri’s own pace rather than the other way around.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is founder volunteer teaching an official Silicon Jeri program?
No. It is a personal choice made by individual founders and mentors at the campus. There is no official schedule, requirement, or campus program behind it.
How often do these school visits happen?
It varies by founder. Some visit roughly once a month, others only occasionally, depending on their own time and the school’s invitation.
What do founders actually teach during these visits?
Usually something simple and visual, like a basic app or website demo, followed by an open question and answer session about what running a company involves.
Are the founders paid or credited for volunteering?
No. These visits are unpaid and untracked by the campus. Founders do it on their own time, as a personal act of giving back.
Does Silicon Jeri employ the students who later join a company at the campus?
No. Silicon Jeri does not employ people directly. Students who eventually pursue tech careers may end up in a job tied to Silicon Jeri, meaning a role at a company based at the campus, not a job with Silicon Jeri itself.
Why do founders choose to volunteer instead of just running an official program?
Founders describe it as staying grounded, repaying the town that gave them their start, and planting a long-term seed for local kids, reasons that feel more personal than something scheduled by an institution.