From Pain To Purpose
- the recreation project
- Apr 2
- 2 min read
Apuke Cosmas' Journey Through Play-Based Learning
The Recreation Project (TRP) is a consortium partner in the Northern Uganda Climate Change Action (NUCRA) initiative, working alongside three other organisations delivering livelihood support across northern Uganda. While partner organisations focus on strengthening household livelihoods, TRP leads on addressing climate shocks by equipping local communities with transferable life and resilience skills. Through its play-based and experiential learning approach, TRP empowers individuals, especially young people to adapt, respond, and thrive in the face of climate-related challenges.
Apuke Cosmas, a participant in The Recreation Project’s play-based training on 21st-century soft skills, shared a powerful reflection from one of the sessions. Participants were asked to pick an object that represented a painful memory from their past. Cosmas chose a stick, symbolizing a bat he once saw used to beat people during the conflict involving the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda.
Later in the activity, participants gathered all the “trash” they had collected, items representing their painful experiences, and worked together to build something meaningful: a model of a school. The exercise symbolized hope and the urgent need to improve education access in their community, where long distances and poor roads contribute to high illiteracy rates. The same stick Cosmas had chosen was used again, this time positively, to mark the boundaries of the school.
Through the training, Cosmas and his group learned that painful beginnings can be transformed into purpose. Inspired by this lesson, they expanded their small savings group into a farming project, growing sugarcane and crops for sale. Today, their group has grown to a value of 5–7 million Ugandan Shillings, proving that unity, determination, and shared vision can turn challenges into opportunities.
“What surprises me most is how play resonates in me so much at my age. From today onward, I look at myself as someone young at heart with great potential to change my community positively," said Cosmas.
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