Okay… how has it already been a whole year?! 🥹
One year ago, we stood in front of our school in Kahawa West with pretty big plans, a lot of hope and probably also a slightly unrealistic idea of what it actually means to suddenly be responsible for an entire school.
Because having a school sounds wonderful at first. Children get access to education, teachers stand in front of their classes in the morning and somewhere, someone is probably learning their times tables.
What you might not immediately think about: salaries have to be paid, finances have to be planned, decisions have to be made, teachers have to be supported, parents have to be involved, repairs have to be organised and approximately 748 small and big problems have to be solved that were never part of any of our plans. 😄
One year ago, we took over the administration of ULT Academy in Kenya. Since then, together with our Kenyan team, we have been responsible for the management, finances and everyday school life at our Academy.
And honestly?
We have learned at least as much this year as the children have.

The ULT Academy was never just a building with classrooms for us.
We wanted to create a place where children can learn and grow. A place where they can make friends, have fun, ask questions, make mistakes and, one day, dream up some pretty big plans for their future.
With taking over the administration, this vision suddenly became reality a year ago.
And reality doesn’t just mean the big, beautiful moments. It also means timetables, conversations, numbers, decisions and sometimes things that make you briefly wonder: “Since when are we supposed to know how to deal with this?” 😄
There has been renovating, organising, planning and replanning. We have changed structures, tried out new ideas and, together with our team in Kenya, kept looking at what our school and, above all, our children really need.
Not everything works on the first try. Some things, actually, don’t even work on the second.
But that’s exactly what it’s all about.

Today, 135 children attend ULT Academy. 45 of them are directly supported by UNDER Lea’s TRUST.
And of course, numbers are important. They show us how much our school has grown and how many children we are now reaching.
But when we think back on this first year, honestly, we don’t think of the number 135 first.
We think of children walking through our school gate in the morning. Of friendships being made on the playground. Of lessons and curious questions. Of laughter coming from the classrooms. Of teachers standing in front of their students every day. And probably also of the occasional moment when chatting was preferred over paying attention during class.
Just school. 💛
Perhaps that is the most beautiful thing about looking at ULT Academy today: It is no longer a project whose future we talk about someday.
It is alive.
Every single day.

When we talk about this first year, we above all have to talk about the people who make sure every single day that our shared ideas become reality.
Our team in Kenya.
The people who are there on the ground every morning. The people who know the children and their families. The people who have conversations, make decisions, solve problems and probably sometimes also wonder where the next unexpected problem suddenly came from. 😄
The people in our birthday photos are a huge part of why an idea has actually become a place where children can learn and grow every day.
We can plan in Germany, do fundraising, write emails and have quite a lot of video calls. But our ULT Academy is lived and experienced on the ground.
And for that, we couldn’t be more grateful.

Of course, a lot has changed on the outside as well. Our Academy continues to develop, rooms are changing and, little by little, the school grounds are becoming more and more the place we want them to be.
But our greatest achievement of this first year cannot be painted, built or checked off a to-do list.
We see our children growing.
Not just physically, although some of them seem to be growing surprisingly quickly in that department too. 😄 We see them becoming more confident, learning new things, staying curious and developing their own personalities.
Our team in Kenya also describes this as the greatest achievement of this first year: the development of our students in their confidence, knowledge, character and curiosity.
And if we’re completely honest, that is exactly why we do all of this.

After one year, we could of course put a nice little checkmark next to “ULT Academy.”
We could.
But we’re not going to. 😄
Because ULT Academy is far from finished. And we’re slowly starting to suspect that a school is probably never truly finished.
There is always something to improve, a new idea to implement or the next challenge to solve. And the purchase of our Academy is not yet fully completed either.
But when we look at where we were a year ago and where we are now, we can still take a moment to pause.
135 children are learning here.
45 children are directly supported by us.
A Kenyan team takes responsibility for this place every single day.
And a rather crazy idea has become a school that is becoming a little bit like home for more and more children.

What do we wish for the second year?
Actually, something pretty simple. That our children can continue to learn, grow, laugh, ask questions and have big dreams. That our teachers can support them along the way. That we can continue developing our school and maybe, one day, actually claim that we have finally figured out how to run a school.
Although we’d rather not get ahead of ourselves on that one just yet. 😄
ULT Academy is growing every day. With every child, every lesson, every new idea and every person who contributes a small part to it.
And there is one thing that is pretty high on our wish list for this coming year: finally taking full ownership of ULT Academy. Because even though we have been responsible for our school for a year now, we are still missing the final 25 percent to complete the purchase. That is currently around €55,000, which we want to raise together.
And because €55,000 might sound like quite a big number at first, we want to show you in our Project of the Month what this actually means in concrete terms. A classroom, a piece of our school and perhaps, very soon, a name on the wall. 💛

Happy 1st Birthday, ULT Academy. 🎂💛

Here’s to many more years filled with education, chaos, big dreams and probably quite a few more problems that we don’t even know exist yet.
We’re looking forward to it.