Building open tools and work groups for one health education, harm and torture prevention, through our growing network
From new publications and tutorials to global collaboration, advancing open science for equity, dignity, and sustainability
Reading time: about ten minutes.
Summary: this update shares a new video, upcoming papers, and the launch of open tools to strengthen EU BEACON’s mission of one health education. Despite obstacles and risks, our collective work continues to expand, aiming to safeguard dignity and secure a humane future.
Today I am sharing a new video from our action. Alongside the transcript, I have included several additional recordings that convey our spirit and mission. More materials will follow, as I am systematically reaching out to potential allies across the EU COST region and preparing to engage media partners through invitations and our first media kit. In parallel, the action’s servers are being equipped with free and open-source tools to support both the research activities and the democratic governance of our network. All related publications will be released progressively between today and next Friday on the official publication:
Humanity faces escalating crises: pandemics, climate change, biodiversity collapse, and systemic inequities. The evidence is undeniable, the responsibility is ours.
Education must be revamped to prepare children to lead with knowledge, competence, and integrity, able to act effectively and in coordination from their countries and across the world.
EU BEACON One Health Education via new technologies, under the European Cooperation in Science and Technology, will invest two hundred thousand euros annually from 2026 to 2029 to build a network of excellence already uniting more than one thousand specialists.
The action pillars are education innovation, global one health, and open science highest standards through open source and democratic means. Thanks to our network, students will learn by doing, guided by trained professionals, facing real challenges with evidence and responsibility.
Ours is a mandate to set new curricula, helping schools and governments implement it, interconnecting learners worldwide, in the path to become responsible citizens, the next batch of leaders, scientists, researchers capable of reversing all current destructive trends.
Please, join us in this shared mission. Together we will secure health, equity, and sustainability for all.
Editing of the final video is still in progress, as I share this, almost ready. I am happy to add your institution or business, organization or service logotype at the end of the video, as supporter, obviously for free. Please, let me know if interested.
https://health.int.eu.org/membership.html
On my end, beyond the action, several papers that had been halted until recently are now reaching their final drafts and will be shared here. These include a study on the abolition of shackling, framed through a historical and comparative analysis of Spain, the European Union, and Indonesia; a contribution on digital mental health for the most vulnerable, co-authored with colleagues from EU BEACON and Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta; and a paper on service-learning, developed with professor Janaina Minelli de Oliveira Ramos from our Action and the Educational Research Methodology with Social Impact group, who also leads our current Horizon proposal on service-learning. Children are also victims of shackling, we must end it.
From these milestones, in the next few days, we advance towards organizing the workshop on systematically mapping and reviewing the scientific literature. Get to connect with other specialists, set the open data standards to measure progress, and ensure it keeps on. By next Friday, all going well, I expect to post the first tutorial on building a basic command-line instruction and embedding it within a bash pipeline, to begin gathering data from the most common sources. Everything will be packaged and shared openly with colleagues worldwide. This is the method we will continue to apply in our Action: each step grounded in open science, each tool developed with a clear function, each contribution meant to be genuinely useful. The goal is to develop tools that serve everyone, broadening our collective reach and affirming that progress cannot be halted, so long as we safeguard the simple means of a functioning computer. The task is to continue teaching and learning, ensuring that civilization and civility prevail. Technology, when aligned with peace and the capacity to prosper, offers a path forward for both present and future generations, unlike the hatred and savagery that many spouse and still perpetuate in this ailing world.
In parallel, a paper documenting the proceedings of the event on psychiatric abuses, hosted two years ago, is finally nearing completion, laying the groundwork for stronger measures in the prevention of socioeconomic, political, medical torture. In case anyone of you needs or wants to get involved, drop me a line. We will get to create a funded consortium to tackle the issue properly, from these first small steps.
At the same time, I must acknowledge the risks we face. As I recently shared again, reflecting on the fragility of life, with my new research team director and with the chair of the Action, our work is threatened not only by neglect but also by hostility and betrayal. Even those who should defend and support end up obstructing or even endangering our lives and efforts. Many around us have already proven their complicity or active involvement. As if the challenges of life were not already demanding enough, the added burden of criminal actions or complicit passivity compounds the strain, distorting environments that should foster knowledge, care, and cooperation into hostile ground. This makes our task not only urgent but indispensable, for the work we pursue is essential to safeguard dignity, advance science, and preserve the very possibility of a humane future.
Despite this, and because of it all requiring urgent action at the most essential level, I continue working. Now back in Yogyakarta, in a somewhat safer position, I hope to contribute for as long as possible, years to come, along you all safer and prospering, helping to build greater safety for all of us through the success of our common endeavor. I will be posting at the EU BEACON publication soon, with further news:
Thanks for reading, and all great work. Wishing you all a great weekend.