Before joining The Resilience Project Fellowship, Caltone Agugo was already deeply engaged in climate action, driven by curiosity and connection. But the work could feel isolating at times. What he found was a space where resilience is something shared, not carried alone.
As The Resilience Project gears up to open applications for our second East Africa Resilience Fellowship on the 18th May 2026, Caltone shares his experience as a 2025 Resilience Fellow:
When I first signed up for The Resilience Project Fellowship, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I expected toolkits. I expected frameworks. I expected to learn the science of how to “bounce back.” What I did not expect was to find a life raft in the form of a circle of strangers who would quickly become the people who understand me best.
The world tells us that resilience is an individual sport. It is the lone hero standing against the wind. But if my journey with this Fellowship has taught me anything, it is that resilience is actually a team sport. It happens in the space between people.
Before I go further, I need to be honest about why I came here in the first place. With growth, adulting comes with losses as we look for wins and in return, it became overwhelming for me. The exhaustion of being overwhelmed whereby you end up choosing to carry all the weight of the terrifying patterns and the weirdness that also comes with it. In my day-to-day life, I have to act like anything is fine, telling myself, you know ‘one day at a time’ or ‘I didn’t come this far to end this far’ for a future that feels increasingly uncertain.
I joined The Resilience Project because to me, this would be a space where I hoped to gain a sense of shared burden. Anxiety tends to isolate me as a person. I took no pride in my solitude, but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. I was hoping that by joining, I would be able to learn how to be in a crisis and not just worry about it and also be in a shared community of lived experiences.
I remember sitting in one of the sessions at the residential, muted by anxiety, listening to someone else articulate a fear I thought I was alone in. It was like a key turning in a lock. Suddenly, the shame that I had been carrying, the feeling that I was failing because I was struggling began to dissolve. When you share your vulnerability and the response is not judgment but a chorus of “me too,” something magical happens. You stop surviving and start building. This was a space where we were invited to take off our armor.
My resilience circle, now ‘The Ikigai Resilience Circle’, Ikigai being a Japanese concept meaning ‘a reason for being’, which became our proactive foundation for resilience and through weekly check-ins with Kevin (my co-host), Judah and Hannah and monthly mentor-mentee meetings with Dr. Toyin Ajao through our inter-generational gatherings, I discovered what it truly meant to be held by a community.
Through the ‘Residential and the Resilience Circle’, everything came alive because it was good to be more self-aware of the things going on and happening around your being as a person such as what to take into consideration based on the 3 Rs of climate anxiety, because we tend to have this existential dread about the future. Like how we want it to be as we grow, how it will look like for our children’s children and whether we will even get to live it or survive in it through the challenges we face in the long run. I mean, we are hopeful and longing for change. There is this song the late Michael Jackson sang about “We are the world… so we make it a better place and let’s start living.” I’d like to let myself live by that and ponder on it.
One of the most powerful threads running through the Fellowship was the exploration of narratives like the stories we tell ourselves. I remember whispering to Victor at the residential that as Cillian Murphy from ‘Peaky Blinders’ would say, “There is no rest for me in this world.” And then on the other hand Ayra Stark from ‘Game of Thrones’ reminds us on the other end, “The North Remembers.”
Between these two truths, we live.
Before the Residential, I spent time reflecting on one of the late renown chefs, Anthony Bourdain, a man who understood that resilience is not about hardness but about staying open. One of his reflections stayed with me: ‘I am not afraid to look like an idiot. I will always, I hope, retain the capacity to be surprised, to be excited, to be a little bit scared. I don’t ever want to lose that. Open your mind, get off the couch, move.’
If I had to choose one favorite moment during the Resilience Circles, it would be when the participants chose to express how they were feeling deeply during the check-in of our welcome session and also how they felt about the community they were now in. One saw the community as a bouquet of flowers. That image has stayed with me: each of us a different stem, different bloom, but together, something whole and beautiful.
There was a moment, midway through the program, when life threw a curveball at me. It felt like everything I had built was crumbling. My instinct was to retreat, to go underground and “be strong” until I fixed it. But the Fellowship had drilled into us a different instinct: connection.
I showed up to the Circle that week feeling hollow. I didn’t have the energy to say much. But the group didn’t need me to perform. They didn’t try to fix me. They just sat with me. It did feel like, “We’ve got you.” In that moment, the concept of “The Resilience Project” stopped being a program and started being a lived reality. I wasn’t resilient because I could handle the storm alone; I was resilient because I had people who would sit in the rain with me until the sun came out.
The Fellowship taught me that sustainability in this work is impossible without community. We talk a lot about burnout in the social impact sector but the antidote isn’t just better time management; it is belonging. When you know there is a group of people who see the real you, the messy, overwhelmed, hopeful the weight becomes manageable.
Looking back, it has been a wholesome experience that blossomed into a thriving community of intentional love and pointless joy. It was a space for each other not just as activists but as humans. A validation that ‘it’s okay not to be okay’ by embracing emotional biodiversity. It has been a journey celebrated with gratitude.
I did find happiness in smaller moments. I learned to listen without criticism. And anyway, we continue weathering the storms together.
My co-host (Kevin) and I really cooked a beautiful circle.
As we approached the Closing Ceremony, I did find myself reflecting on the transformation. I came in looking for answers to put in my back pocket. I left with a circle of allies who had my back. We came from different backgrounds, different sectors and different walks of life but we were united by a desire to live and lead with more heart.
The magic of the Resilience project lives in the vulnerability. It lives in the awkward check-ins. It lives in the moment you finally admit you’re not okay and realize that makes you stronger not weaker.
Thank you to the entire TRP team for creating this space, my mentor Dr. Toyin and my fellow fellows, if that English serves right. But most importantly, thank you to my co-host, Kevin and The Ikigai Resilience Circle. You have changed the way I move through the world. I am no longer trying to be a lone pillar of strength. I am simply a part of a web, deeply connected and infinitely stronger because of it.
And again, here’s to the storms we weathered and the ones we’ll face together. This is not a goodbye; it is a hope to see you and engage again.
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