Our Story

Chapter One

It Started Long Before Thailand

The story began many years earlier, in two completely different lives that had no reason to intersect. Long before Thomas and Patricia had ever heard each other’s names, they were both, in very different ways, moving towards exactly the same destination without realising it.

Thomas grew up in the beautiful region of Alsace, tucked between France, Germany and Switzerland, where crossing a border often feels no more significant than crossing a bridge. He built a successful career in technology that lasted more than twenty-five years and, perhaps most importantly, became the proud father of three wonderful children. By most people’s standards, his life was exactly as it should have been.

Yet there was always another part of him that quietly refused to settle.

Photography had started as a hobby, but somewhere along the way it became something much more important. It gave him a reason to organise events, meet new people and bring complete strangers together around a shared passion. That idea eventually grew into Tour de France Photo, a travelling project that united photographers, artists and creatives from across Europe.

Officially, people came to take photographs. Thomas soon realised that the cameras were almost incidental. What really mattered were the conversations that happened because of them, the friendships that formed and the sense of community that developed whenever creative people were brought together in the same place.

Years later, he would realise that Kids&Sparks was built on exactly the same principle.

Life has an interesting habit of slowing us down just before it changes direction. During a period away from work, supported by France Travail, Thomas finally found the time to tackle projects that had been waiting patiently for years. He renovated his family home, researched generations of family history and wrote a book about his ancestors.

Most people would probably have considered that productive enough.
Thomas, however, couldn’t stop thinking about another idea. It had first appeared during a trip to Thailand, where he met Australian triathlete Ellen Guiney. As they talked about travel, photography, creativity and sport, they kept returning to one simple question: what if those same passions could help children discover confidence in themselves?

They weren’t trying to create future photographers or professional athletes. They simply wanted to create opportunities for young people to discover what they were capable of.

Although life eventually took Thomas and Ellen in different directions, the idea stubbornly refused to disappear.

Over the following two years, Thomas continued developing it on his own. He designed the first Kids&Sparks website, imagined workshop programmes, refined the philosophy behind the project and gradually realised that he no longer wanted to spend the rest of his life behind a desk.

He wanted to build something that genuinely mattered.

By then, he had already decided that he would return to Thailand. The only part of the plan that remained completely uncertain was who would share the journey with him.

Thomas often laughs now when he says that he had always imagined spending his life with an Australian woman and one day building something meaningful in Australia. At the time, it seemed like one of those pleasant dreams that were probably best kept to yourself because they sounded far too unlikely ever to happen.

Fortunately, life has never paid much attention to probability.
Patricia’s journey could hardly have been more different.

She was born in Munich to Polish parents before growing up in Australia, where she learned at a very early age that not every childhood follows the script it is supposed to. Some of her happiest memories came from unexpected places, including a refuge for women and children escaping domestic violence.

Looking back now, she often thinks that this was where the very first seed of Kids&Sparks was planted, although she had absolutely no idea at the time.

The remarkable women she met there somehow found enough strength to care for everyone else while carrying burdens of their own. There was also a drama teacher who quietly saw something in a shy little girl that she couldn’t yet see in herself.

Years later, Patricia realised that all of those people had one thing in common: they believed in her before she believed in herself.

Perhaps, she now thinks, that is where every spark begins.
Life rarely followed a straight line after that.

Patricia studied acting, built a successful career in Poland, wrote her autobiography, worked as a social worker, later moved into aviation, lived in Switzerland and eventually settled in France.

If Thomas’s life resembled a carefully planned road trip, Patricia’s looked more like someone had enthusiastically dropped spaghetti across a map and confidently declared, “Perfect.”

Looking back, however, every unexpected turn taught her something valuable. Every country introduced her to people she would never otherwise have met, and every career showed her another side of human nature.

Travelling taught her perhaps the most important lesson of all: whether you are standing in Sydney, Warsaw, Zurich or Paris, people usually want exactly the same things. They want to feel safe, they want to feel loved and, above all, they want to feel that they matter.

By the time life brought Patricia to France, she was exhausted—not because of work, but because life itself had become heavy. Two deeply unhappy relationships had gradually convinced her that perhaps she simply wasn’t very good at choosing people, and she had almost resigned herself to believing that chaos was just something she attracted.

A few months before Christmas, after one particularly difficult day, she sat down with a notebook and wrote ten wishes for her future. She didn’t do it because she expected the universe to grant them. She did it because writing them down seemed considerably healthier than sitting on the kitchen floor wondering what on earth was supposed to happen next.

Three wishes stood out above all the others.
She wanted her daughter to grow up happy and healthy.
She wanted to spend her life travelling while doing something that genuinely mattered.
somewhere near the top of the page, she admitted that she still hoped to meet the love of her life.
She folded the page, put it away and carried on with life.
Neither Thomas nor Patricia realised it then, but they had both arrived at exactly the same place.
Thomas had spent years quietly building a dream - Patricia had spent years quietly looking for one.

Neither of them knew that those two journeys were about to become the same story.

Chapter Two

When Two Dreams Became One

When Thomas and Patricia met, neither of them felt as though they were starting something entirely new. Instead, it felt as though two separate journeys, which had been unfolding independently for years, had finally arrived at the same crossroads.

Thomas had already spent more than two years developing Kids&Sparks. He had built the website from scratch, refined the philosophy behind the project and imagined workshops combining photography, creativity and sport to help children discover confidence and resilience. Although the concept had evolved considerably since his first conversations with Ellen Guiney in Thailand, he knew there was still something missing. He had the vision, but he had always imagined building it with someone who shared not only his enthusiasm but also his values.

Patricia had no intention of joining someone else’s project. She had spent enough years rebuilding her own life to know that she needed to believe wholeheartedly in whatever came next. Yet the more Thomas spoke about Kids&Sparks, the more she recognised pieces of her own journey within it. Her years in social work, acting, education and communication had taught her that children rarely need rescuing; what they need is someone who believes in them, gives them opportunities and allows them to discover their own strengths.

Without ever consciously deciding they were doing it, they began building the project together.

Their first New Year’s Eve together included an ambitious attempt at making Tom Kha Gai using what appeared to be a perfectly respectable recipe from the internet. The internet, unfortunately, had been lying. The coconut milk separated into an alarming collection of floating lumps, the lemongrass stubbornly refused to become edible and both of them spent much of the evening trying to discreetly remove fibres from between their teeth.

It was objectively terrible.

They laughed so much that neither of them really cared.

A few days later, Patricia moved into Thomas’s house together with her two cats, who approached the situation with exactly the level of enthusiasm one expects from cats. One carefully inspected every room before reluctantly accepting the new arrangement, while the other behaved as though he had owned the house for years and was generously allowing the humans to stay.

Life settled into place remarkably quickly.

Their mornings soon developed a routine that became one of their favourite parts of the day. While most people seemed incapable of functioning without coffee, they happily started every morning with soup. It had begun almost by accident after the first meal they cooked together, and somehow it became a tradition that neither of them questioned.

Sitting opposite each other with steaming bowls balanced beside their laptops, they spent hours rewriting workshop plans, redesigning presentations, improving the website and sending emails to schools, NGOs, charities, foundations and businesses. Every now and then, usually after convincing themselves that optimism was an entirely reasonable business strategy, they wrote to public figures and celebrities as well.

Hugh Jackman still hasn’t replied, although they continue to believe that his inbox is probably just unusually busy.

They quickly learned that building something worthwhile requires a certain level of stubbornness. Most emails never received a reply, but they chose not to see silence as rejection. People were busy, organisations received hundreds of requests every week and meaningful projects often took time to find the right people. Every positive response, however small, reminded them why they had started.

As they worked, the project itself became clearer. They realised that Kids&Sparks had never really been about photography, sport or even workshops. Those were simply the tools they intended to use. The real purpose was to help children develop confidence, curiosity and creativity while connecting the remarkable people and organisations already making a difference in their communities. The world, they realised, did not need another organisation trying to reinvent the wheel. It needed stronger connections between the people who had already dedicated their lives to helping others.

While the project was growing, so was their relationship. They talked constantly, sometimes for hours at a time, sharing stories about their childhoods, their families, their successes and their mistakes. They spoke openly about the relationships that had shaped them, the ones that had hurt them and the lessons they hoped never to learn twice. There was very little need to impress each other because neither of them had the energy for pretending to be someone they weren’t.

Their children were always at the centre of those conversations. They found themselves discussing the kind of world they wanted them to grow up in and wondering how many young people might benefit from having just one adult who believed in them at the right moment. Looking back, many of those conversations quietly became the philosophy behind Kids&Sparks long before they ever appeared on the website.

Then, one ordinary morning, an email arrived from the Mae Fah Luang Foundation in northern Thailand.

It wasn’t an offer of funding, a partnership agreement or an elaborate proposal. It was simply an invitation to meet and discuss the project. For most people, it might have been just another email. For Thomas and Patricia, it felt like the first real sign that the idea they had been quietly building together might actually have a place in the world.

The decision that followed surprised almost everyone around them because they made it with very little hesitation. Thomas sold his house, Patricia packed up her apartment and, somewhere between garage sales, cardboard boxes and the impossible task of deciding which possessions genuinely deserved a place in their suitcases, they realised that starting a new chapter required far less than they had imagined.

A few weeks later they boarded a plane to Thailand carrying almost everything they owned, a project that existed largely on laptops and in notebooks, and the quiet conviction that sometimes the biggest risks are simply the moments when life finally catches up with the dreams you’ve been carrying for years.

Chapter Three

Thailand Had Other Plans

When Thomas and Patricia boarded the plane to Thailand, they believed they had a fairly simple itinerary. They would spend a few weeks travelling through the country, meet with the Mae Fah Luang Foundation, introduce Kids&Sparks to a handful of organisations and, hopefully, return home with a clearer understanding of whether their project had a future.

They should have known better.

Their journey began in Chiang Mai, where they were welcomed by members of the International Rotary Club. Like many first meetings, it had all the ingredients of a formal introduction: polite conversation, exchanged business cards and carefully prepared presentations.

Within minutes, however, the atmosphere became something entirely different.

Rather than questioning whether Kids&Sparks was a worthwhile idea, people wanted to know who else they should meet. Instead of discussing obstacles, they started making introductions.

It was the first time Thomas and Patricia experienced something that would happen again and again throughout their journey.

Almost every meaningful conversation ended with exactly the same sentence.

“There’s someone we’d like you to meet.”

Through Rotary, they were introduced to Avis Rider and Agape Home, a place whose remarkable story had already touched countless lives. Reading about Agape Home beforehand had prepared them intellectually, but nothing could have prepared them emotionally for walking through its doors.

The children did what children often do best.

They ignored titles, presentations and carefully prepared speeches and simply invited two complete strangers into their world.

Within minutes, Thomas was taking photographs, Patricia was playing games and everyone had forgotten that this was supposed to be a meeting.

It became one of the defining moments of their journey.

For the first time, both of them truly understood that Kids&Sparks had never really been about cameras, workshops or sport.

Those were simply the tools.

The real project had always been about creating moments in which children felt seen, encouraged and free to express themselves.

Leaving Agape Home was unexpectedly emotional, not because they felt they had changed anything, but because they understood that they had been changed themselves.

From Chiang Mai they continued north towards Pai. Anyone who has driven that road knows that its seven hundred and sixty-two bends deserve almost as much recognition as the destination itself. By the time they finally arrived, they had gained a profound appreciation for straight roads and considerably less confidence in Google Maps’ estimated travel times.

Nestled among the mountains, they discovered a small village school that quietly challenged many of their assumptions. There were no state-of-the-art classrooms, no expensive equipment and no impressive technology.

What the school did have was teachers whose commitment to their students could not be measured in budgets or buildings.

Watching those children learn reminded Thomas and Patricia that inspiration has very little to do with resources and everything to do with the people standing in front of a classroom.

Their final stop in northern Thailand brought them to Doi Tung, where Varaporn and the Mae Fah Luang Foundation welcomed them with extraordinary generosity.

Over the following days they learned about decades of patient community development, education and sustainable change. There were no quick fixes, no dramatic promises and no desire to impose solutions from outside. Everything had been built patiently, respectfully and alongside the local communities themselves.

It was impossible not to admire.

By the time they left Doi Tung, Thomas and Patricia realised something unexpected.

They had arrived in Thailand hoping to present an idea.

Instead, Thailand had become their greatest teacher.

Chapter Four

Following People, Not Plans

By the time Thomas and Patricia left northern Thailand, they had become surprisingly relaxed about changing plans. They still made them, of course, but experience had already taught them that Thailand treated itineraries more as friendly suggestions than firm commitments.

The original idea was to spend a few quiet days on Koh Klang, a small Muslim fishing island just off the coast of Krabi. They imagined catching up on emails, organising their notes and perhaps even taking a day off.

The day off lasted approximately four hours.

From the moment they arrived at Islanda Hideaway Resort, they were welcomed with a kindness that immediately made them feel less like paying guests and more like relatives who had finally remembered to visit. Meals stretched into conversations, conversations drifted into stories and, sooner or later, someone always asked the same question.

“So… what exactly is Kids&Sparks?”

By then, Thomas and Patricia had stopped trying to deliver the perfect explanation. Sometimes they started with photography. Other times they talked about creativity or sport. Occasionally they found themselves talking about confidence, childhood or simply the importance of giving young people someone who believed in them. Strangely enough, no matter where the conversation began, it always seemed to arrive at exactly the same place.

The resort manager listened carefully before smiling and saying something that neither of them had expected.

“If you ever want to organise workshops here, we’ll help.”

It wasn’t the kind of polite promise people make because they think it’s the right thing to say.

He genuinely meant it.

Before long, they were discussing the possibility of opening the resort to children from across the island and imagining what it might look like if every child on Koh Klang had the opportunity to take part in a Kids&Sparks programme.

As they looked back over the previous few weeks, they realised something rather remarkable. None of the opportunities they had been given had come from polished presentations, impressive business plans or carefully rehearsed pitches. They had come from conversations over shared meals, cups of tea and people who believed in an idea because they believed in the people sitting in front of them.

Around the same time, another unexpected chapter unfolded on the other side of the world.

Long before he met Patricia, Thomas had often joked that one day he would probably end up with an Australian woman and somehow find himself building something meaningful in Australia. At the time it had sounded wonderfully unrealistic which, as it turns out, is often the first clue that life is quietly making plans of its own.

Together they travelled to Australia during National Reconciliation Week, where they met organisations working with Aboriginal communities, children in out-of-home care and families facing extraordinary challenges. Although the settings were very different from those they had encountered in Thailand, the conversations felt surprisingly familiar.

Everywhere they went, they met people who had devoted their lives to helping children. They met teachers who refused to give up on students everyone else had written off, social workers who carried more hope than cynicism despite everything they had witnessed, and volunteers who somehow managed to find extra hours in days that already seemed impossibly full.

What struck Thomas and Patricia most was that nobody asked, “Why should this project exist?”

Instead, almost everyone asked exactly the same question.

“How can we help?”

Some people shared decades of professional experience. Others introduced them to organisations they would never have discovered on their own. Volunteers contacted them simply because they believed the idea deserved a chance.

By then, Thomas and Patricia had developed what they jokingly referred to as their international business strategy.

Whenever someone said, “There’s somebody I’d like you to meet,” they simply smiled and said, “Absolutely.”

Remarkably, it kept working.

Chapter Five

The Island That Changed the Story

When Thomas and Patricia arrived on Koh Phangan, they did exactly what they had done everywhere else in Thailand: they booked accommodation for a couple of weeks, convinced themselves they had a sensible plan and promised each other that they definitely wouldn’t become attached to another place.

By then, they really should have known better.

Koh Phangan has a curious way of introducing people to one another. Someone recommends a café, the café owner introduces you to a teacher, the teacher invites you to visit a local project, and before you know it you’ve rearranged your entire week because someone says, “There’s somebody I’d really like you to meet.”

It turned out to be an excellent system.

One of those introductions led them to Gianni, an Italian restaurateur whose determination to improve educational opportunities for Burmese children was impossible not to admire. Together with Teacher Tong and a remarkable group of local volunteers, he had helped build Play Learn Plearn, a community where children could learn, play and simply enjoy being children.

What impressed Thomas and Patricia wasn’t the size of the project or the resources behind it. In fact, there weren’t many resources at all. What impressed them was the attitude. Nobody spent their time explaining why something couldn’t be done. If the children needed books, someone found books. If they needed volunteers, people volunteered. If something broke, somebody fixed it. It was wonderfully uncomplicated.

The more time they spent on the island, the more they realised that this attitude wasn’t unique to Play Learn Plearn. It seemed to exist everywhere they went.

They met teachers who quietly gave far more than anyone expected of them. They met volunteers who somehow managed to squeeze another few hours into already impossibly busy days. Local businesses didn’t ask what they might gain from supporting Kids&Sparks; they simply asked what was needed.

Phangan Arena immediately offered its support. Fairtex Academy welcomed conversations about future collaborations. Café owners, restaurant managers, artists, business owners and parents all seemed eager to contribute in whatever way they could. Some offered equipment, others offered introductions, and many simply offered encouragement.

It was difficult not to feel that they had stumbled across a community where helping one another was simply considered normal.

Then there was Tiki Beach Resort.

It is difficult to explain why certain places stay with you long after you’ve left. Sometimes it is the view, sometimes the food and sometimes the people.

For Thomas and Patricia, it was unquestionably the people.

The family who welcomed them there had a rare gift for making complete strangers feel as though they had been expected all along. They arrived as guests, but within days they were sharing meals, swapping stories, laughing about cultural misunderstandings and discovering that some of the best conversations happen long after dinner should have ended.

It also became one of the places where Thomas and Patricia occasionally remembered that they were not only building an organisation—they were also building a life together. They still argued from time to time, usually about something entirely unimportant that felt extremely important for approximately fifteen minutes. Thomas generally wanted to move faster, Patricia usually insisted on thinking things through, and both secretly believed they were being the more reasonable one.

Fortunately, neither of them stayed cross for very long.

By then they had discovered that good food, a walk along the beach and the ability to laugh at themselves solved most problems surprisingly efficiently.

When they eventually looked at the calendar, they realised they had long since passed the date they had originally intended to leave.

Nobody had made a conscious decision to stay.

Koh Phangan had simply stopped feeling like another destination on their journey.

Without either of them quite noticing when it happened, it had quietly become home.

Chapter Six

The Story Continues

Looking back, Thomas and Patricia often try to identify the moment when Kids&Sparks stopped feeling like their own project and started belonging to a much larger community. Neither of them has ever been able to agree on exactly when that happened because there wasn’t one defining moment. Instead, it happened gradually, through hundreds of conversations, countless introductions and an extraordinary number of people who simply decided they wanted to help.

Every country they visited added something new to the project. Thailand taught them to listen before proposing solutions and showed them that the strongest communities are always built from within. Australia reinforced that lesson when they travelled there during National Reconciliation Week and met organisations working with Aboriginal communities, children in out-of-home care and families facing extraordinary challenges. Although the settings were very different, the conversations were remarkably similar. Everywhere they went, they met passionate people who had dedicated their lives to helping children flourish.

Many of those conversations developed into lasting relationships. Professionals generously offered their knowledge, volunteers shared their experience and organisations opened doors that Thomas and Patricia would never have found on their own. Little by little, Kids&Sparks evolved from an idea developed around a kitchen table into an international network of people who believed that collaboration could achieve far more than competition ever could.

Of course, there were moments when they wondered whether they had completely lost their minds. Building an international project from laptops, notebooks and occasionally unreliable Wi-Fi while living out of suitcases is not, as it turns out, the conventional route to success. There were weeks when emails seemed to disappear into a black hole, meetings were postponed and carefully prepared plans changed without warning. Like every couple working together, they also discovered that sharing both a relationship and a mission occasionally led to spirited discussions. Thomas usually wanted to move faster, Patricia preferred to think things through, and both had to remind themselves from time to time that solving the problem was considerably more important than winning the argument.

Fortunately, those moments never lasted very long. Every time doubt began creeping in, another conversation would restore their confidence. A teacher would introduce them to a new community. A volunteer would offer their expertise. A child would proudly show them a photograph they had taken or a drawing they had created. Those small moments reminded them that progress is rarely measured by dramatic breakthroughs. More often, it grows quietly through trust, consistency and people choosing to believe in one another.

People often ask Thomas and Patricia where they see Kids&Sparks in five or ten years’ time, and they usually smile before answering because the truth is that they have absolutely no idea.

They hope the project will continue growing throughout Thailand, Australia and beyond, but they have learned not to become too attached to carefully constructed plans. If the journey has taught them anything, it is that the most meaningful opportunities almost always arrive unexpectedly. Every important chapter in their story began with a conversation they never expected to have, an introduction they hadn’t planned or a person who decided, often without much hesitation, that they wanted to help.

Looking back, it is tempting to believe that everything happened because of careful planning, but the reality is rather less glamorous. Kids&Sparks grew because people believed in it before it was finished. Teachers opened classroom doors. Community leaders shared their experience. Organisations introduced them to other organisations. Volunteers offered skills they had spent years developing. Time and again, complete strangers became friends, and friends became partners.

Today, Thomas and Patricia no longer think of Kids&Sparks as something they created on their own. They think of it as a growing community that belongs to everyone who chooses to become part of it. The workshops, the photographs and the sporting activities are important, but they are not the heart of the project. The heart has always been the people who believe that every child deserves an opportunity to discover their own strengths and to be surrounded by adults who encourage rather than limit them.

The story is still unfolding, and they sincerely hope that many more countries, communities and friendships lie ahead. They know there will be challenges because every worthwhile journey has them. There will almost certainly be more unanswered emails, more last-minute changes of plan and, if history is anything to go by, a great deal more soup.

What gives them confidence is not the certainty of knowing exactly where Kids&Sparks will be in ten years’ time. It is the certainty that they will continue following the same simple principle that has guided them from the beginning: listen carefully, stay curious, trust good people and never underestimate what can happen when one person says,

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

After all, that is how this story began.

Contact

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General contact : Hello@kidsparks.org

Founder : Thomas Ueberschlag

Co-Founder / Head of Communications : Patricia Volny

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