Implementation, ethical governance, and alignment with global transformation goals: global network and COST action operational directives
It is simple: we must uphold the highest scientific, ethical, and pedagogical standards. Learning together, teaching openly, by strict example too, implementing responsibly. Nothing works, otherwise.
Estimated reading time: fifteen minutes to half an hour.
Executive summary:
The EU BEACON One Health Education COST Action confirms full funding until late 2029 and proceeds with its structured implementation, as prepared and staged. This post serves as an open invitation to participate, invite colleagues, and help consolidate our global excellence network. Under the leadership of Chair Professor Dr. María Jesús Lirola and directive board member Henning, founder and now formally appointed as Scientific Communications, Dissemination and Exploitation Officer, all operational systems are being deployed. Four Horizon Europe proposals are under coordinated development to address: (1) structural deficits in mental health, family, and social support integration; (2) brain health promotion in school settings through physical activity, optimal nutrition, and strengthened community networks; (3) prevention of neurodevelopmental harm caused by environmental and chemical exposures; and (4) civic transformation through service learning. All prospective consortia members are expected to submit a full professional profile, including a curriculum vitae, motivation letter, references, and a short video responding to structured, child-framed questions. Full compliance with open science, open-source technologies, ethical and legal coherence, and structural alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals is non-negotiable. This is a working network of the highest international standards, ready to host global actors and deliver transformative results. All engagement is tracked, peer-reviewed, and transparent. This is not about representation. It is about implementation.
The structure is now fully active again, following a period of disruption caused by unacceptable power struggles, opportunistic interference, and sabotage attempts. Mismanagement and breakdown of honest engagement following the COST funding award required immediate intervention. We thank all members who acted to prevent further harm, and particularly Professor María Jesús Lirola for her decisive containment and principled leadership. Members are reminded to report all threats or breaches of trust. Silence is not an option.
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Internal and external communications:
The EU BEACON One Health Education COST Action is not symbolic. It is operational. COST provides an institutional platform for coordination, but it is our responsibility to determine the scope, direction, and legitimacy of this network. Every action, vote, proposal, and role will be registered, peer-reviewed, and subject to traceable governance without obstructing streamlined workflows. Informal hierarchies, manipulation, and malevolent influence have no place here. Strict compliance is mandatory. No access to COST mobility, action funding, or full participation will be granted without adherence to our shared values and the completion of a verified member profile. This includes a short recorded video, curriculum vitae, motivation letter, and reliable references. These are not administrative formalities but foundational components of trust, transparency, and operational fairness. They are also required for participation in open peer review, transparent proposal submissions, and auditable funding procedures.
The member video must answer four simple questions, posed from a child’s perspective:
What do you do
How did you get here
What are you working on next
Why does it matter to children around the world
These are not promotional exercises. They are relational, diagnostic, and part of our scientific and educational dissemination effort. They also serve as materials for public engagement, school-based collaborations, and visibility across sectors. We provide full technical and peer support to ensure all members, regardless of background, can comply. Shyness is not a problem. Inactivity without justification is.
This process also helps us identify early career researchers and senior colleagues who require support. All applications, proposals, and funding decisions will undergo open peer review. All discretionary decisions will be voted upon transparently. No informal decisions will be allowed. No hidden hierarchies will be tolerated. No plausible deniability will be accepted. All activities will be timestamped, auditable, and governed by an open-source infrastructure designed for long-term replication and collective accountability. We are finalising national COST teams in every participating country. All members are expected to identify capable, ethical professionals for inclusion. The aim is to construct balanced, representative, and fully active national nodes that reflect the diversity and excellence of our network. Please mobilise your networks accordingly. All are welcome, if aligned and prepared.
Please, mobilize your own networks. All welcomed in. If you are ready to lead, contribute, protect, and support this structure with clarity, truthfulness, and responsibility, make yourself known now. To engage directly or nominate others, contact [email protected].
Dissemination:
The foundation of One Health Education is not content delivery. It is the ethical configuration of knowledge production, dissemination, and governance. Our infrastructure includes the following elements. Verified member profiles and institutional affiliations, serving both scientific visibility and trust-building. A transparent open-source interface for collective decision-making. Activity heatmaps and dashboards to visualise participation and identify imbalances. Digital records of votes, contributions, amendments, and authorship. Open peer-review systems across proposals, outputs, and communications.
These are not optional, nor aesthetic features. They are functional necessities. Global collaboration requires open systems. Our tools are being designed to be adaptable to school curricula, scientific and engineering education, and democratic decision-making in organisational contexts. These systems are themselves educational and financial tools. They will serve as part of our income strategy. Our infrastructure teaches by doing. It enforces integrity, prevents abuse, and models reproducibility.
Dissemination will also include open educational content across member countries. Training will be aligned with our core areas: decision science, health systems, sustainable development goals, and action-research methods. This is what One Health Education means. We teach not abstractions but systems, not rhetoric but practical implementation. All members are encouraged to propose dissemination activities, including participatory workshops, theater, music, sport, scientific games, software development, citizen science modules, open courseware, and integrative curricula.
Again, email [email protected] for any proposal, for the time being, while we set our full systems within the action domain.
Exploitation:
The Horizon Europe proposals under development are not conceptual drafts. They are applied strategies responding to systemic failure, grounded in empirical observation, transdisciplinary research, and lived experience. Four proposals are in final consolidation for submission by 16 September 2025. Contributions must be confirmed by July.
Mental health in education: integration of mental health as a structural axis of childhood and adolescent development. Frameworks for curriculum, teacher training, and support ecosystems will promote peak performance and resilience. This is not reactive care or minimal thresholds but the foundation of equitable flourishing.
Environmental impacts on brain health: this Horizon call, The impact of pollution on the development and progression of brain diseases and disorders, addresses neurotoxic exposures. We focus on the early life stage, at-risk populations, and high-impact zones, including war, disaster, and abandonment, with full policy and health system integration.
Brain health in school settings: an holistic intervention model including structured physical activity, optimal nutrition, micronutrient supplementation, community reinforcement, and psychosocial support. This aligns One Health principles with direct implementation in school and public health systems.
Service learning and civic responsibility in education: education as the formation of character and public responsibility. Young people will co-design responses to social challenges with mentorship, responsibility-building, and intergenerational learning. Apprenticeship and action-research will form the basis for evaluation and reform.
Before proposing yourself as member or leader of any new consortia, please remember that the action does not benefit financially from participation in these projects. We do not manage reputations. We build solutions. All progress is documented. All success is shared as public knowledge, contributing to our common success as a network and foundation for One Health Education. EU BEACON action works to become, in the near future, an European Flagship, setting new standards in aligning education and health to prevent conflict, restore institutional trust, and generate durable global capacity. We need these collective success, and we work as hard as humanly possible to help out. Each proposal demands participation. This includes drafting, leadership, pilot site implementation, partnership development, and field alignment. Those who obstruct, misrepresent, or fail to contribute will be excluded. Those ready to lead or propose new initiatives will be supported across all open calls. The goals require, the children globally is in direst need of our shared success in completing our mandate.
Strategic clarification:
The four years of COST funding and active support represent a critical opportunity. This is an institutional gateway and coordination platform of immense strategic value. But to be a COST Action is not the objective. It is a means to achieve more. It is an enabling momentum. This action was conceived, led, and built to extend far beyond the constraints of COST in scope, ambition, and operational mandate.
We lead a network of global reach, not confined to the COST area but strengthened by it as a foundational base. It is now our responsibility to consolidate a structural, financial, and legal foundation that sustains the transformation we were established to deliver. The urgency of the harms we address, the lives at stake, and the scale of reform required globally demand us to set income streams, partnerships, and institutional capacity that surpass what COST alone can offer. To hesitate now would be to squander the opportunity and betray the mandate entrusted to us.
References:
COST. (2023a). Annotated rules for COST Actions. European Cooperation in Science and Technology. https://www.cost.eu/uploads/2023/03/COST-094-21-Annotated-Rules-for-COST-Actions-Level-C-March-2023.pdf
COST. (2023b). Memorandum of understanding (MoU) template for COST Actions. European Cooperation in Science and Technology. https://www.cost.eu/funding/how-to-get-funding/documents-and-guidelines/
COST. (2023c). Grant awarding user guide. European Cooperation in Science and Technology. https://www.cost.eu/uploads/2023/03/Grant-Awarding-User-Guide.pdf
COST. (2024). COST strategy: Excellence and inclusiveness in research and innovation networks. European Cooperation in Science and Technology. https://www.cost.eu/strategy/
IASC. (2024). Humanitarian action for children: Global trends and needs. Inter-Agency Standing Committee. https://www.unicef.org/media/149906/file/Humanitarian-Action-for-Children-2024-Overview.pdf
OCHA. (2024). Global humanitarian overview 2024. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. https://gho.unocha.org
UNDRR. (2023). Global assessment report on disaster risk reduction 2023: Our world at risk. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. https://www.undrr.org/gar2023
UNHCR. (2024). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2023. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/global-trends
UNICEF. (2023). Child displacement: 2023 overview and trends. United Nations Children’s Fund. https://www.unicef.org/reports/child-displacement-2023
UNICEF. (2024). The State of the World’s Children 2024: For every child, every right in a changing climate. United Nations Children’s Fund. https://www.unicef.org/reports/state-worlds-children-2024
World Bank. (2022). Groundswell Part 2: Acting on internal climate migration. The World Bank Group. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/36248
I am two months late from this schedule. My bad! It could had barely been more horrible, from all responsible around, whose duty was and is to support and collaborate. Planned destruction, on their end, instead of fulfilling their duty -utterly betraying us and the entire common endeavours, law itself destroyed by each of their deeds. This needs to stop, we all safer from here on in this network and each in our lives. The network is to include safeguarding and S.O.S. mechanisms, to coordinate urgent responses against such acts of aggression and destruction, from first signs of harassment to any crime, alerted and us all helping out. More systems to be deployed soon.