Executive coordination briefing: new membership, new Horizon proposals requiring your engagement, and media kits for October kick off for the action kick-off
Network and systems development, task group formation ahead of the the action launch, along with instructions on the new batch of proposals for the open Horizon call, deadline now 79 days away.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Summary: We will formally kick off as funded COST action in October. Processes are now underway to set strong national groups, thematic ones, and a young researchers mentorship and innovation network, all while we set up our open governance and transparency infrastructure. All communication remains internal until launch.
Shared chairs workshop and action launch: we thank professor María Jesús Lirola, our chair, for attending the official COST chairs workshop in Brussels last week, where key procedural elements and timelines were clarified. We happily announce she reached safe, and all is going from good to better; all good news. The action officially kicks off in October, marking the beginning of the four-year implementation period. Funds are secured in her institution, Universidad de Almería. Work is ongoing for our network to span all over the COST area countries by that time. Full membership will ensure higher impact and access to the full funding endowed to bigger, most complete and deserving action networks.
Horizon Europe proposals, participation urgently needed now: next week we will be sharing full draft proposals and further participation requirements for our current Horizon Europe submissions. These projects are entering the decisive stage, and we must ensure institutional engagement, schools, practitioners, researchers, and national partners fully on board to ensure the success we all want. Remember to all that may want in, we need principal investigators and the best possible partners.
The current main proposals are:
Fostering brain health in school settings: exercise, sports, sleep, nutrition and supplements for cognitive performance and top acuity, remediation, protection. Health for success. This project targets the foundations of neurocognitive and emotional resilience through structured, measurable routines in physical activity, rest, social engagement and nutrition—placing emphasis on Omega-3 levels and metabolic balance as early interventions. This is key for learning and emotional regulation, and deeply connected with fair and inclusive school-based health.
Pollutants and brain health: cleaner air, soil, water and food chains, for cognitive performance, acuity and all damage prevention. This proposal focuses on the reduction of exposure to environmental neurotoxins across urban and rural areas. It links environmental justice with educational equity, and prepares scalable strategies to mitigate damage already ongoing in school-age populations.
Shared decision making mental health for children: best practices in mental health pedagogy and responsible shared action through education and relational systems of care. Designed to replace fragmented and coercive approaches with community-rooted that place children, teachers, carers, schools and families at the center. Aimed at reversing the alarming rise of mental distress among youth through systems of trust, continuity, and local anchoring.
Service-learning internal mentorship programs: responsibility and institutional peer support. This project activates relational networks of learning and care inside schools and adjacent services. It responds to the systemic absence of constructive learning, socialisation and counseling in school settings by formalising internal mentorship as a pathway to meaning, contribution, and institutional change. A perennial open invitation to share on abuses suffered, end all harming conflicts, and promote health.
These are all set to be longitudinal, interlinked, and anchored in the One Health framework, building from our goals into actionable scientific action-research. Each extends the principles of decision science, healthy behavioural systems, and open democratic governance, applied and taught in context. Each one is a building block toward the world we are co-creating: peaceful, restorative, protective, informed by evidence, and humanely run. Participation is our responsibility: please, get involved.Institutions, professionals, and members committed to these goals are called now to step forward. Please, reach out to allies, bring only the best in.
These Horizon proposals directly advance multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs), including SDG 3, good health and well-being, SDG 4, quality education), SDG 5, gender equality, and SDG 13, climate action, while strengthening democratic practice through participatory, open, and ethically structured systems, fully aligned with our strategic goals to build the knowledge, the systems, and the human environments where safe and healthy children thrive, where science, care, and rights-based participation are taught, lived and protected.
Regional and thematic leadership: all action members are now encouraged to take initiative in proposing and leading regional and thematic teams. These structures will coordinate sub-actions and joint efforts, enabling decentralised leadership and strengthening collaboration across domains. Please invite trusted experts, particularly responsible young talent from underserved areas, women, and allies from schools, communities, and public institutions. Engagement of national and local governments is welcome—we are already working on that front, and your support is essential to make the action a success.
Communication and media strategy: no main nor any media and external networks communications will be made before October. Please, restrain and contact straight the top trusted experts of your choice in all domains required. Until then, all updates remain internal. Media kits are being prepared to help members reach national channels when the time comes. Any public announcements, interviews, or posts must be coordinated in advance. For these matters, and to express interest in leading or contributing to strategic projects, please contact Henning Garcia, communications, dissemination and exploitation officer. Please send your expressions of interest to join existing proposals or initiate new ones, to [email protected].
Transparency and infrastructure: further details will also follow soon regarding the transparency and accountability protocols, adapting and deploying only full free open source resources, hosted on our dedicated action server along with other required infrastructure. The architecture will follow a minimalist structure, ensuring best decision science practices, streamlining all process, ensuring full transparency. We will most likely be using a customized Discourse instance including voting and open peer review for any and all important proposals. All proposals reviews and decisions involving funds or strategic shifts will be managed there, as part of our internal communication framework and governance standards.
This first software release will lead ad support our next educational and care tools required, such as the expert carer-tutor system, and other tools such as habit forming and conflict resolution and decision making ones, to teach and learn long-term shared responsibility. We remind you we will also soon be also opening for scientific missions funded by our own action, on top of the bigger action-research consortia we are setting up on a regular basis. We appreciate your patience as we finalise systems and consolidate priorities for immediate collective action.
Young researchers group: following the Brussels workshop recommendations, an under 40 years group will be established as part of the internal structure of the action. This will co-organize international, national and regions peace contests, support engagement, ensure shared responsibility and long-term knowledge exchange, including the facilitation of dedicated mentorship from senior, elder expert members, as well as laying down capacity-building pathways across disciplines globally. All interested members are encouraged to express their interest in joining by submitting a short video presentation and a letter of interest, as described in earlier posts.
The key prompts remain: what do you do, how was the journey here, why, and what do you envision as next steps? We now repost old news with the instructions and link to our streaming channel, already with over 20,000 subscribers, to assist new members in disseminating their work, be screened, selected and engaged.
Please, send us your videos, engagements and any relevant message on the ongoing to [email protected]. No other channel is now open for official communication, as we work to set it all up. Wishing you health and success, a strong start to this summer.