Partners
VUB - Belgium
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) came into being in 1970, after it separated from its French-speaking counterpart, the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). The VUB is a dynamic and modern university with eight faculties and four campuses in the Brussels Capital Region. The main campus in Etterbeek is home to seven faculties while the medical campus and the University Hospital are in Jette. VUB offers quality education to more than 19,156 students through 149 study programmes and three Doctoral Schools. All degree programmes offered by the VUB are accredited by the Dutch-Flemish Accreditation Organisation (NVAO) ensuring that they meet predefined quality standards. VUB is an internationally oriented university attracting many international students (more than 4,494 international students from 145 nationalities, mostly coming from non-EEA countries) and offering 51 English-taught programmes.
Internationalisation is one of the top priorities in the VUB strategic plan. The International Relations office (IRMO) was created in 2004. VUB believes that national and transnational collaboration projects are of crucial importance in ensuring innovative education and cutting-edge research. To that purpose, VUB makes every effort in creating strong partnerships with academic institutes, both regional and international organisations, industry, policymakers and governments. Up to the present moment, VUB has 182 active cooperation agreements (MoUs) with different universities across the world. Concerning EU funding and the Erasmus programme in particular, the VUB has been participating in the programme since its start in 1988. Over the past five years, VUB has been coordinator or partner in nearly 50 Erasmus+ projects, including two Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees. VUB’s strong commitment to international cooperation has led to its participation in the transnational university alliance called EUTOPIA. Responding to the EU call ‘European Universities Initiative’, VUB and EUTOPIA’s partners are now gradually trying to build inter-university and inter-disciplinary integration in teaching and learning and research.
In Infoready they act as project coordinators and oversee the running of the activities in Belgium.
Project School - Italy
Project School is a startup company based in Italy aimed to strengthen the creative and design skills of individuals and organizations willing to develop solutions to small and big challenges of their communities. Using the most innovative design techniques in the social field, Project School intends to create a generation of professionals capable of designing ambitious and sustainable initiatives, able to solve some of the most difficult challenges of our society: education, work, environment, migration, etc.
The goal of Project School is to increase the quality of initiatives and projects with a social impact by working on everyone’s skills: from young people in schools to associations, from aspiring designers and social entrepreneurs to public bodies that want to invest their resources in effective projects. Services delivered are many and users ‘needs-tailored: classroom training, online training, individual and organizational consultancy, workshops and events.
Project School methodology is composed by three main phases:
1) Coaching. Our approach starts from a coaching and listening path through which the participants have the opportunity to discover and bring out the enormous potential of their ambitions and ideas.
2) Empowerment. (Re)discovery, enhancement and strengthening of the skills needed to design and implement a concrete project through a creative design writing capacity building process.
3) Validation. As a last step, the participants will structure real project proposals, which will allow them to verify the soundness of their ideas, as well as the possibility to network with other organizations that will act as project partners.
This methodology was tested with different clients and across several EU-funded (KA2, KA3) projects in relation to active citizenship and urban regeneration; women empowerment and gender equality; migration and social inclusion; youth engagement and sustainable development.
In Infoready they lead WP5 and oversee the running of the activities in Italy.
Culture Polis - Greece
CulturePolis is a Civil Society Organisation based on the island of Corfu, Greece, offering tailor-made services for civil society and its stakeholders. Our services address organisations’ needs for Awareness Raising, Capacity Building, including innovative Τraining Platforms and Digital Transformation initiatives, and Citizen-centered research activities.
Our services focus on cultural Innovation with special attention on :
- The promotion of intercultural dialogue as a driver for social cohesion and inclusion in Europe and MENA countries, with emphasis on the Greek and the Arab world powered by the Centre of Greek and Arabic Literature and Culture – K.EL.A.L.P. (established in 2020) and the Euro-Mediterranean Sustainability and Culture Network – EMCN (established in 2023)
- The promotion of cultural tourism and its relations to heritage at local and regional level;
- Capacity building for the Cultural and Creative sector by supporting CCI professionals in their entrepreneurial, marketing and digital upskilling.
To achieve its strategic goals and deliver innovative services to citizens and stakeholders related to Awareness raising, CulturePolis undertakes Research and contributes to Digital Transformation in society and the economy. In this regard, it has undertaken many projects and initiatives and developed several collaborations with public and private companies and non-profit organisations in Greece and abroad.
All actions aim at exchanging good practices and know-how, promoting culture and cultural tourism and its relations to heritage, as well as social/societal policies and strategies, intercultural dialogue, sustainability issues and innovation through studies, consultations and targeted adult training.
Over 45 European projects and initiatives were implemented in the last 17 years and have led to the development of intellectual outputs, dissemination and sustainability plans, impact analysis reports, as well as thematic deliverables for innovative actions. These results provided its staff with great experience in both project and financial management and related administration issues in various EU programmes involving sustainable heritage management, citizens’ participation in decision-making, intercultural dialogue and innovation training platforms for distinct categories of citizens, stakeholders and professionals.
In Infoready they oversee the running of the activities in Greece and of leading WP2.
Reset - Cyprus
With over 20 years of combined experience in research and education, RESET invests on the creation, evolution, and revolution of social-driven concepts, systems and practices which prioritize humanity and respond to the most demanding societal challenges of our time. Our organization focuses on knowledge acceleration so as to amplify positive local, national, regional and global change
The purpose of RESET is to promote a fair and nonviolent world through education, restorative dialogue, skill development among professionals and vulnerable groups, and constructive action. RESET is working in close cooperation with governmental departments, local municipalities, NGOs, commercial entities, and educational institutions in order to address market, social, economic and cultural challenges.
RESET belief, is that the three pillars of our work, Research, Education and Transformative Dialogue can lead to creative solutions that impact significant change to the social fabric of every society.
RESET team is composed of experienced, fully equipped researchers, dialogue facilitators, trainers, educators, project managers, web developers & graphic designers. The areas of expertise are in the fields of community and youth-led initiatives, education/e-learning, social inclusion, transformative dialogue and creative empowerment.
RESET also has particular know-how in using digital tools and resources to develop digitalised content as well as in evaluating the impact of digital technologies to assess learners’ competence development. Furthermore, RESET has strong experience in the design, implementation and dissemination of national and EU projects (Erasmus+, ISF-P). RESET team has a diverse range of knowledge on several topics including social inclusion, migration, climate change, youth empowerment and innovation, integration of vulnerable groups (i.e. disabled), adult education, and prevention of risky behaviours.
A core pillar of RESET’s activities includes the implementation of open dialogue workshops to positively transform internal beliefs and instigate gender equality, acceptance of religious and cultural diversity, tolerance, critical thinking and social inclusion.
In Infoready, they lead WP3 and oversee the running of the activities in Cyprus.
Forum Educativo - Spain
Forum Educativo is a Spanish organization with residence in Seville, focused on training and educational development of people of all ages, especially in the areas of entrepreneurship, disabilities, adult education, youth, languages, social inclusion and rural development. Forum Educativo is convinced that the education is one of the factors that most influences the advancement and progress of individuals and societies. In addition to providing knowledge, education enriches culture, spirit, values and everything that characterizes us as human beings. For this reason, they have specialised over the years in creating and adapting our courses to the needs of our clients.
Their main domains are:
Adult education
The key role of adult education is to allow workers to develop their skills and acquire new ones. In the wake of the economic crisis, it gives adults a chance to retrain and upskill, which is particularly important to people who will need to work past pension age and need support to train for a new role. We provide courses for adults, not only to improve their working conditions, but also to improve e.g., their skills in new technologies, social media, etc.
Support to disadvantaged individuals
We focus on Social Inclusion through partnership to deliver projects supporting disadvantaged individuals into employment, training and self-employment and social enterprise development through a wide range of informal learning methodologies, we deliver services to and support a range of excluded groups.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship refers to the process of creating a new enterprise and bearing any of its risks, with the view of making the profit. Our programs offer the possibility to develop and strengthen the entrepreneurial quality, to motivate people for achievement and to enable participants to be independent, capable, promising businessmen/women. The objective is to make the trainees prepared to start their own enterprise after the completion of the training program.
Personal development
Problem-solving, critical thinking and interpersonal skills like empathy and collaboration are the skills needed for future workforce. We offer courses to complement their academic preparation, as well as courses for those who once dropped out of school but are now re-entering the world of education.
In Infoready, they oversee the running of the activities in Spain and act as co-leaders of WP4.
Eurospeak - Ireland
Eurospeak began as a private English language school based in the UK which is accredited by the British Council and the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). In 2021, they continued to expand and establish another educational technology-focused spin-off, Eurospeak Ireland.
Eurospeak Ireland is an educational technology company dedicated to delivering educational products and training. They deliver online English Language classes tailored to the needs of individuals and groups as well as design and develop innovative educational tools such as e-courses, online assessments, and more. The English courses provided include Business English, IELTS test preparation, and ‘bootcamps’ for groups with a specific purpose.
Additionally, Eurospeak has a special focus on helping disadvantaged groups, whom they aim to support through their participation in Erasmus+ projects. Eurospeak promotes actions that take an innovative and creative approach to the inclusion of marginalised groups such as migrants, refugees, the unemployed, LGBT+, and older people. Eurospeak also offers services related to EU funding such as proposal writing and project evaluation.
Lastly, having a highly multinational team means that they provide services in translation for a variety of languages including Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Greek, among others, producing high-quality learning materials that meet the demands of today’s ever-evolving society.
Eurospeak Ireland’s mission is the promotion of innovation, integration, and inclusivity in education training. They have significant expertise in developing and conducting training programmes, both in the corporate sector and for different disadvantaged groups. They begin with a needs analysis while paying special attention to the individual learning context, ensuring that the content and the language used are at an appropriate level for each particular group. This comes with the understanding that different learners must make use of the available resources in different ways so that they can make the most of their high-quality training programmes.
In Infoready, they oversee the running of the activities in Ireland and co-lead WP4.
