Social Entrepreneurship in Jaffa

The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa was founded in 1994 as a joint venture of Tel Aviv University, the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and the Israel Council for Higher Education. Ever since its establishment, the college has championed high standards for academic scholarship along with an unwavering commitment to the community. The founders' decision to build the campus in Jaffa, a community beset by social and economic difficulties, underscores the particular relevance of the college's social vision.
The college initiated and administers a number of educational and social projects.  In 2007 it launched the "Social Entrepreneurship" program with the full support of the Rothschild Caesarea Foundation. The program targets a characteristic failing in disadvantaged communities – passivity.  Members of such communities rarely take the initiative to remedy and improve their condition and thus undermine the likelihood of sustainable social change.
The program therefore aims to foster and promote social initiative and social entrepreneurship within the community.
Mixed Arab-Jewish groups of college freshmen, all residents of Jaffa, are recruited to join the program.  Over the course of three years, in addition to their regular studies, they receive training in social entrepreneurship.  Specifically, they are encouraged to map their community, identify problems and shortcomings, design and implement solutions, manage the implementation phase, raise funds to sustain their projects and subsequently evaluate effectiveness.
Two key features make this program unique.  First, the interventions designed by the students must solve a real problem in the community, and their success is measured by the actual impact of the intervention.  Second, the intervention is not an academic exercise that can be discontinued or dismantled once the term is over.  One of the criteria of the intervention's success is its longevity.
Hence, prior to approval for an intervention to move to the implementation phase, students are required to show how it will be sustained beyond their graduation.
The number of important interventions already in place attests to this program's success. Some of the challenges they address include the need to strengthen the perceived value of education, particularly higher education; children's difficulty in coping with the transition from elementary school to junior-high school; computer illiteracy; and the challenge for young Arab women of reconciling traditional family demands and norms with their desire to study and pursue professional careers – to name but a few.