Leadership Collective 2026
Theme: Climate Citizenship
Each year, the Leadership Collective focuses on a theme that connects global youth leadership with pressing global issues, particularly climate change.
In 2025, our theme was Climate Citizenship, exploring how young people can take meaningful action to combat climate challenges.
We believe empowering youth with the skills and confidence to drive change equips them to become active and impactful global citizens.
2026 Edition Spotlight
Meet the 2026 Cohort
Travel Toes creates immersive experiences tailored to your passions—whether that’s languages, social justice, history, or environmental action.
This isn’t typical tourism. You’ll learn from experts, live with local families, and connect with students from around the world. Every journey is customized. Every moment is intentional. Every experience transforms
The world was the first classroom.
Before a single boarding pass was printed, the cohort logged into three live sessions, got one deceptively simple homework assignment — look at your own city — and wrote down exactly who they intend to become.
Three online sessions built one shared language for the year’s theme. The arc is deliberate: first understand the problem, then study how cities survive it, then decide what you’ll do about it.
Session One
The Fundamentals of Climate Change
A fast-paced crash course on the world’s greatest “wicked problem” — the science behind it, its environmental, social and economic dimensions, and how mitigation differs from adaptation. Students asked sharp questions from the very first slide.
Session Two
Sustainable & Resilient Infrastructure
From understanding climate change to designing places that can live with it. Through a risk activity rooted in their own lives, students unpacked hazard, exposure and vulnerability — and studied real-world resilient architecture, from traditional building wisdom to modern urban design.
Session Three
Addressing Climate Change & Actioning Transformation
The final session moved past causes and impacts to the only question that matters: now what? Nature-based solutions, climate technologies, and policy, education, finance and social movements as levers of change — ending with each student reflecting on their own role in it all.
No single solution is a panacea — so the cohort learned to carry the whole toolbox.
One assignment before the Infrastructure session: find one feature in your hometown that keeps people safe and comfortable — something you’ve walked past a hundred times. The cohort turned ordinary architecture into evidence of everyday problem-solving. Tap a flag to travel.
& verified
by LC26
Courtyards that are open to the sky
Hot air rises out, cool air drifts in, and sunlight streams down — cutting the need for electric lighting entirely.
Filed by Vartika
← → also works on a keyboard · a small selection of the cohort’s work
The “Knowing Thyself & Dreaming” assignment asked each student where they want to go and who they want to be — and their answers now shape how facilitators run the programme itself. No one-size-fits-all. The cohort wrote its own brief.
From Now → To The wildest dreams
“LC 2026 will connect me with people who can help me achieve my wildest dreams.”
Kyren · on why they joined
From Now → To A living planet
“I should play a part in saving our planet’s resources for a more sustainable future.”
Paloma · on why they joined
From Now → To Real-world problems, solved
“I want to become a software engineer and build a career solving real-world problems.”
Tharun · destination declared
From Now → To Helping people
“Medicine, audiology, or mathematics — because I enjoy helping people and solving problems.”
Sibongile · destination declared
From Now → To Humans + Earth, on speaking terms
“A peaceful life inspiring better relationships between humans and their environments.”
Jonas · destination declared
From Now → To Everyone at the table
“I love to make people feel heard and included.”
Kimberly · superpower on record
Voices from the cohort
Before a single flight was booked, The Fifty had already introduced themselves — in application essays, one very lively group chat, and conversations on their own doorsteps. Here's what they sounded like.
The application never ranked achievement. It asked one open question — and caught who these students are when nobody's grading them.
"Genuine exchange begins when people stop trying to explain one another too quickly and allow difference to breathe."
Cielo Bustamante Cieza · Peru
"It is not about where you are from, but about where you feel accepted."
Joythi Priya · India
"I don't just want to be an engineer who builds machines; I want to be a contributor to climate resilience."
Humera Ali
"I have a sincere care for our environment, and I firmly stand against its destruction."
Ziya Bhat
The icebreaker was three prompts on WhatsApp: your name, your community, and someone you look up to. Half the cohort named a public figure. The other half named someone standing right next to them.
One thing I like to call myself is the unstoppable passionate walking cat 🐈
10:42People here don't wait for opportunities — they create them.
10:47She always gives her kids the world... nothing is given but earned. 🤍
10:53Regardless of his past, he continues to strive to be the best version of himself.
11:01One assignment. One rule: put the phone down and talk to someone in your own neighborhood about the climate. Many knocked on the closest door of all — family.
HOME
A mother's houseplants
"We should take care of our planet because the earth is the only one God gave us."
— Diana Jimenez, interviewed by her son Alfred Lopez-Jimenez
THE
GARDEN
A grandmother's garden
"This garden taught me responsibility, and how to care about what I put in my body."
— Lisa Barts, interviewed by her grandson Corey Mikula
GHANA
A teacher's five words
"If we waste the Earth, we waste our future."
— Mr. Stephen N. Y. Essandoh, interviewed by Olivia Mbroh
THE
COHORT
What it actually taught
"This was more of learning about different communities rather than an assignment."
— Suhana Parvin, reflecting on the exercise