Partners

INIT ASSOCIATION is an NGO founder in 2012, with the purpose of developing and supporting the innovative small businesses in Cluj Napoca. The organization is implementing its projects through 2 brands that it owns: Cluj Startups and Freshblood. 
Cluj Startups started as a startup founder’s community in 2014, and to this day it preserves the community focus, engaging around 3000 startup founders and startup enthusiasts in Cluj-Napoca. Cluj Startups has, at the moment, 3 main focus areas of activity: 
 
Education – here the organization understands its role in promoting the entrepreneurial spirit at the highest levels of education in Cluj. This is achieved through partnerships with the universities in which mentors and trainers form Cluj Startups' work with students, to support them in their startup initiatives during various events. 
 
Connecting – Cluj Startups understands it’s role as a catalyst in the ecosystem that connects various stakeholders. Using the organization’s network we are able to connect startup founders with key resources in the market, like partners, business prospects, even candidates that are fit to join the team as employers. 
 
Investing – this an important focus area in recent years, since more and more startups are emerging and they need the proper funding to ensure their chances of success. It is because of this we have started in 2018 the Transylvania Angels Network, a business angels group that aims to connect the startup investors in Cluj-Napoca with the startups in need for money. 
 
Freshblood is the second brand under INIT Association, and it started in 2016 from the need to focus on innovation in the medical field, one that has been evolving in Europe and in Cluj-Napoca. 
UPorto, founded in 1911, is one of the largest higher education and research institutions in Portugal and for several years now the most sought-after HEI, active in all fields with around 31,820 students (14% international), 2,300 academics (87% with a Ph.D.) and researchers and 1,500 non-teaching staff. It is one of the best positioned PT HEIs in national and international rankings. It has 14 Faculties, 1 Business School and 35 Research Units located in 3 campuses within Porto. 
 
U.Porto is the leading producer of science in Portugal, responsible for 23% of the scientific articles produced in the country. Providing high-quality training and education is of paramount importance to the U.Porto. Being a truly international University, with 4.421 international students from around 100 nationalities, internationalization is one of U.Porto’s strategic pillars and objectives, allowing the development of existing collaborations, as well as the establishment of innovative cooperation through the creation of active links with institutions from all over the world (more than 2500 active agreements). 
 
UPORTO’s commitment is built upon different guidelines ranging from quality control to multidisciplinary cooperation, internationalization, development, openness, rationalization, efficiency, and sustainability. This strategy is directed to the development of UPORTO’s activity in three strategic areas - education and training, research and the third mission – community extension. The overall objective is to cement UPORTO’s position as a leading institution at a national and international level.
 
The Competences Centre on Active and Healthy Ageing of U.Porto (Porto4Ageing) holds the mission of promoting, transversally to U.Porto, the quality and multidisciplinary of training, research, development and innovation activities carried out in the field of active and healthy ageing. Moreover, Porto4Ageing is a consortium that brings together over 100 organizations, representing different stakeholders – regional governments, health and care providers, academia and research, industry and civil society – and building upon the quadruple helix approach. The Porto4Ageing alliance is committed to promoting local convergence and improving the health innovation ecosystem while reducing and overcoming existing bottlenecks.
EBI - The "Europäische Bildungsinitiative" - (in English European Initiative for Education EIE) - is a Private Non-Profit Education and Training Association located in Wiener Neustadt /Austria. EBI’s mission is to endorse an innovative approach to education, training, and culture. Target groups are adult learners, teachers/trainers in Adult Education, teacher trainers and trainees in the frame of C-VET (and Vet). The three departments of the EBI are (a) a training unit, (b) a technical unit (focusing on the creation of multimedia and interactive teaching content, maintenance of learning platforms and programming individual solutions in the frame of offered training) and (c) a special research team. 
 
The scope of the EBI is the development of special training courses, new approaches to learning and teaching, as well as the participation in international projects to gain new knowledge and competences and to disseminate the research results and experiences created during the provided courses, research work and active involvement in teaching to others (in Europe). The association is involved in the education of adults and of teachers/trainers in Adult Education (AE). Furthermore, the association engages in research focusing on teaching methods (eLearning, Blended Learning, Flipped Learning. and technology-enhanced teaching & training). The EBI offers IST-Training Courses in eLearning, Technology Enhanced Learning, Blended Learning, Multimedia Based Presentations, Project Management and Content Management Systems. 
 
The association is well connected in Europe - this covers similar institutions as well as AE providers (and their Umbrella Organisations) and universities. The research work of the association is focusing on teaching using technology - this means Blended Learning, eLearning and Technology Enhanced Teaching and Training TETT). 
BBU - Babes-Bolyai University is one of the most prestigious higher education institutions from Center-Eastern Europe, being the university with the oldest academic tradition in Romania (1581). It is the largest Romanian university, with 21 faculties, approximately 45.000 students and 3.000 permanent university staff, situated at the confluence of the Eastern and Western cultures. BBU is the leader among the universities in Romania according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) – known as the Shanghai Ranking of universities- the oldest and the most prestigious international ranking of universities considering the indicators of excellence, education, and research. Also, BBU is in the first position in the country, according to other University meta-ranking, such as Center for World University Ranking (CWUR), World Universities Ranking al Times Higher Education (THE-WUR), University Ranking of Academic Performance (URAP) and US News Best Global Universities. 
 
The scientific activity of the Public Health Department from the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences from Babes-Bolyai focuses on the submission and implementation of projects for the research-development-innovation, capacity building and mobility on different sub-domains of public health, medicine, and social and economic sciences. BBU offers the first Bachelor program in Public Health taught in English from Romania and Central and Eastern Europe (Department of Public Health). BBU also offers Master Programs in Health Management and Policy and Public Health and is one of the most active research centers in the field of Public Health from Central and Eastern Europe, which provides numerous possibilities of practice in the over 25 research studies that are being implemented. The main objective of the department is to improve the health of the people from Romania and the central and eastern Europe through the interdisciplinary collaboration for research and practice in the public health domain.