The founders
Julien Levis worked seven years as an AESH in France, the school support role that accompanies pupils with
disabilities in mainstream classrooms, alongside children with
very different profiles (autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia,
intellectual disability). Seven years of watching what the adults
around a child try, adjust and reinvent every morning. Gwendoline Levis spent more than ten years leading children's activities, structuring group time for kids who do not fit the boxes
prepared for them.
Then we became parents, and the experience changed in nature.
Knowing a child is not always enough to know what to do at twenty
to eight on a Tuesday morning. That position, the adult who knows
their child and still has nothing they can use right now, is what
gave AtyKids its shape.
In 2019, we guided children as they created Hopla Chef, an inclusive educational publishing project born in a
classroom. The project was theirs: we brought the framework, the
method and the tools. We continued that thread in 2024 with
inclusive travel journals, in partnership with the French
association L'Enfant@l'Hôpital.
Hopla Chef received two distinctions, the APAJH Trophies and the Public Prize at the Council of Europe,
along with a recognition from the University of Strasbourg, which is not of the same nature. Julien is also a co-founder of
the Collectif Ensemble association.
We mention them for what they are: the record of a project run
with children in 2019, not an endorsement of AtyKids and not an
outside opinion on our content. What stayed with us was not the
awards: it was watching those children grow in confidence as they
built it.