In December 2018, the United Nations declared January 24 the International Day of Education. To mark the occasion, IN-HABIT recalls the activities organised with the schools in Las Palmeras, Cordoba.

The 24^th of January marks the International Day of Education. The theme for 2023, the fifth year this day has been observed, is “to invest in people, prioritise education”. Amongst others, the aims of the observance day include getting every learner climate ready through greening education, promoting public digital learning, and advancing gender equality in and through education. The International Day of Education 2023 endeavours to present education as “the path to peace, sustainable development, and individual and collective well-being”.

With people at the heart of the IN-HABIT project, and the project’s focus on sustainability and inclusion, education is a key element in helping to boost health and well-being in the project’s four pilot cities. Its importance is threefold: firstly, citizens’ health and well-being rely on access to education; secondly, it is essential to educate citizens about the actions they can take to improve their health and well-being; and thirdly, it is vital for the IN-HABIT partners to learn from the citizens about their communities and the challenges they face, in order to better support them in developing visionary integrated solutions that can actually work for the local people.

In Córdoba, for example, the University of Córdoba team designed various activities with the two schools in Las Palmeras in order to involve children and young people in the IN-HABIT actions being developed in the neighbourhood. Over the past year, for instance, children have been actively involved in events such as the Carnival party, the International Women’s Day event, the Christmas party, the ‘Bailar tu barrio’ activity, and the graduation mural painted at Las Palmeras for the students who had finished high school. Two workshops were also developed with the schools where children from 4 to 12 years old designed Christmas ornaments that were then used to decorate the central place in the neighbourhood for the Christmas party. The school children also participated in recording a video collecting the wishes of all Las Palmeras residents, in order to understand how they see their neighbourhood and the wishes they have for this new year. The video will provide the IN-HABIT team with value insight into individuals’ perspectives on the needs of Las Palmeras residents and the things they would like to see in their neighbourhood.

As the IN-HABIT project continues, education will remain a priority in Cordoba, as well as the three other pilot cities, helping to drive both health and individual and collective well-being. For more information on the International Day of Education, visit https://www.unesco.org/en/days/education.