The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality's Young Adults Center seeks to foster social entrepreneurship in the city and advance policies that benefit young adults.
Around 130,000 young adults currently live in Tel Aviv-Yafo, accounting for one-third of the city’s population.
The Young Adults Unit was established in 2010 and has since then worked to equip young adults who live in the city with the best tools for impacting their own future and that of the city, the society and the community they are part of. The basic assumption we work according to is founded on two guiding principles –
1. There is a need to create events, services and programs for young adults that are tailored to the language they speak and make use of means relevant to them.
2. Young adults are an important driving force wherever they are located and we want to maximize their cultural, social, economic and community strengths for the benefit of the young adults themselves and for the city and society as a whole.
To achieve that, we operate in three in main areas: we run a network of centers for young adults deployed around the city, organize municipal events and projects (for example, the Urban Innovation Interns Program, the Social Salon, and others), and advance policy changes (such as the Fair Rental Law, the recommended lease agreement in the city, revisions to the procedures governing the use of empty buildings by artists and social entrepreneurs).
Our activities share a key element, which is an open code working method that was borrowed from the world of technology. Similar to Wikipedia, which created a platform that enables its multiple users to produce the largest encyclopedia in the world, we, too, enable young adults who live in the city to bring the content that interests them to our centers and run their own activities, ranging from play rehearsals to exhibitions, lectures on various topics and cultural and recreational events.
Mazeh 9, the first young adults center in the city, was opened in 2011 following an extensive public participation process (conducted for the first time by the Municipality) that used technological tools and involved around 1,000 young adults. As a result of Mazeh 9’s development and success in responding to the needs of young adults, additional centers were opened by the Young Adults Unit – The Library, a technology entrepreneurship hub located in the Shalom Tower, Yefet 83, Vardiel 17 and HaKeshet 2. The Young Adults Unit operates under the Youth and Young Adults Department of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality’s Community, Culture and Sports Administration
