General information

Youth work in Tartu is focussed on promoting constructive leisure activities for young people aged 7-19. There are about 13,500 people in this age group in Tartu, which is the primary target for activities organised by hobby schools and associations of recreational activities (approx. 14,000 participants), hobby groups in schools (approx. 7500 participants) and youth centres (approx. 2500 visitors annually).

The primary areas of youth work in Tartu are:

• diversifying opportunities for involvement for young people and increasing their inclusion in the development of the city;
• finding opportunities to enhance entrepreneurship, creativity, self-initiative and common activities among young people and to help them enter the labour market;
• increasing the availability of youth work and supporting employment readiness among young people;
• developing evidence-based youth work using appropriate environments and methods;
• increasing the professionalism of youth workers and developing a system to value and recognise them.

Extracurricular education and recreational activities are systematic, instructed activities outside of school and work. Extracurricular education can be obtained from hobby schools that hold a state-issued education licence to teach dance, sports, nature, art or technology or follow other extracurricular study programmes. Lessons usually take place several times a week. Click here for more information on recreational activities. There are around 50 hobby schools with around 14,000 students in Tartu. For more information on extracurricular education and recreational activities, see here. 

Various services, ranging from career advice to summer employment opportunities, have been created to support the employment readiness of young people. Tartu Youth Work Centre Anne Youth Centre organises group employment opportunities for young people in Tartu: a youth work camp for 200-300 participants (tntk.tartu.ee/tartu-noorte-toomalev/). Important partners that help promote the employment readiness of young people are the Rajaleidja Centre, the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund and Tartu Business Advisory Services. These institutions help provide practical training opportunities for young people who do not speak Estonian or who have special needs, and also help with practical training, vocational education, the establishment of student companies and more.

Tartu City Youth Council is a participatory body with the right to make suggestions operating alongside the City Council, which represent the interests of the youth of Tartu. The Youth Council is comprised of 15 members who are elected for a term of one year. First democratic election were held in January 2019.

The right to stand for election and be elected to the Youth Council belongs to a young person whose place of residence according to the population register is the City of Tartu and who is 14–20 years of age at the time of the election.

The bases for the functioning of the Tartu City Youth Council, approved by the Tartu City Council, can be found here.

Consistent monitoring of the situation of young people is considered important in the development of youth work in Tartu. Among other things, the City of Tartu promotes research on young people and youth work by granting awards for studies carried out by university students on the topic of youth work in Tartu. Most of the study results are only available in Estonian. Nevertheless, English-language summaries of theses written by students at the University of Tartu can be found in the DSpace database.