As we approach the holidays, many are concerned about divisive conversations and disruptive moments at family events and neighbourhood gatherings. Joe Palaggi reminds us to seek that place where “no single worldview gets everything it wants, but everybody gets enough stability to keep moving.” At the core of this statement is an acknowledgement that no one perspective holds ultimate expertise. As we close out the year and look ahead to 2026, it may be helpful to consider different approaches to solving our challenges.
Similarly, a recent article from Harvard suggests that it might be time to retire leadership models based on the authority of a single charismatic person or visionary problem solver at the top. “As our world grows increasingly more connected and complex, however, this top-down approach to leadership is becoming increasingly outdated,” suggests the author, noting that many organizations are now shifting towards “new models of collective leadership.”
Collective leadership may be better suited for difficult, entrenched, cross-sectoral issues. It allows groups of people to develop joint solutions, reducing reliance on singular perspectives or authorities. It incorporates diverse expertise by enabling those with specialized skills or knowledge to lead solution development. It can be less conflictual and more consensus-oriented with the right dispute resolution mechanisms.
Collective leadership also allows for deep partnership and collaboration, fostering an ecosystem approach that can make deep inroads on difficult issues such as ending child abuse. In the UK, the contextual safeguarding model developed by Carlene Firmin and Durham University examines the risks that young people face, risks that are beyond their parents’ control. This approach looks at peers, schools, neighbourhoods, and other contexts to understand where children encounter abuse and what could be done to improve protection. Solutions developed focus on reducing a broader range of risks, not just changing the behaviour of the children affected. This may include working with youth groups on safety initiatives, ensuring shop owners or retailers know what to do if they observe a child in an unsafe situation, helping police and legal authorities take action, and increasing awareness among the general public in high-risk locations.
In Kenya, an innovative multisectoral partnership of government, nonprofit, and private sector stakeholders is tackling child abuse holistically through a collective leadership model. The intent is to implement a set of integrated solutions that address prevention, response, and care while also removing systemic barriers that obstruct efforts, such as unfair social norms, ineffective processes, or a lack of rights-based educational and training content. Partners include ZanaAfrica, a child protection and gender equity hybrid nonprofit social enterprise; the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development as the lead government partner; Education Design Unlimited, researching the barriers that teachers face when delivering puberty education and child safety content in classrooms; Dignitas, experts in teacher training and coaching; and Zeraki, an app used widely across the country by teachers, parents and students for educational and curriculum content. Together, they are adapting a proven child protection school program for delivery across the country, aiming to reach some 24 million children and adolescents at scale eventually. The collaboration is more than a standard partnership: each organization plays a key role in solution development, testing, and implementation, leveraging its own strengths, networks, and expertise. Through this collective leadership and ecosystem-driven approach, the collaboration can have a much bigger impact than each organization working alone: every partner solves a piece of the bigger puzzle.
However, collective leadership isn’t easy. To begin with, the underlying issue has to be well understood in its complexity, pushing past simplistic answers such as “children are responsible for their own safety.” In fact, no minor can consent to their own abuse. Collective leadership models need to consider the factors that contribute to success in the eventual solution and recruit the right partners for the collaboration. Organizations may lack the connections, networks, and relationships they need to pull together cohesive strategies. There may be project implementation challenges or budget constraints that hamper their work; for example solutions at scale rarely receive sufficient grant funding, and evidence generation and sharing are often minimized when resources are scarce.
Despite these barriers, such partnership-based, collaborative approaches give us reason for hope, especially at a time of funding cuts and deep divisions over the future of democracy and civic engagement. By sharing responsibility, collective leadership can provide more effective, impactful pathways towards a better world, with greater cohesion and partnership to come in 2026.
Roopal Thaker is a Public Voices Fellow on Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse with The OpEd Project and works for ZanaAfrica, a Kenyan organization working on child protection and gender equity.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain.