The City of Ljubljana received the Youth-Friendly Municipality Certificate awarded to municipalities by the Institute for Youth Policy and the Association of Municipalities and Towns of Slovenia.

On the occasion, the Head of the Office for Youth of the City of Ljubljana Dr Uroš Grilc emphasized that exactly one year has passed since the adoption of the Strategy of the City of Ljubljana for the Youth 2016-2025. It is the first comprehensive development document of the City of Ljubljana which covers all areas of work and proactively includes youth policy in all public policies, that is, housing, health, education, employment, culture and sport, social, etc. And despite the fact that we still have 9 years to implement the youth strategy, which contains 14 goals and 38 measures, the first year was doubtlessly of key importance. It was crucial for the establishment of first steps for further development of the youth sector in the City of Ljubljana and the improvement of the situation of young people who live (over 58,000), study or work (56,000) in the capital city. Namely, in 2016, the City of Ljubljana created and brought to life three vital measures for the youth indicated in the Strategy of the City of Ljubljana for the Youth 2016¬-2025 which are a tough nut to crack for all local youth policies: employment, housing and high-quality youth work. We approached these three areas in a new way: being familiar with previous measures aimed at youth employment and addressing the housing issue we were aware that a different approach was needed to achieve concrete results. Youth employment is an important topic for the City of Ljubljana as the municipality wants to become an active partner and to contribute to the improvement of the labour market situation for the youth. The Cool Job! (Kul služba!) project launched in thirty-one companies and public institutes established by the City of Ljubljana has added a youth dimension and opened the doors to young people. With it the City of Ljubljana sets an example for all other employers to be as concrete as possible in their approach to youth employment. Mid December the City Council of the City of Ljubljana is going to discuss the Rules on non-profit housing allocation to the young. Based on it we are going to publish a special, separate public call for young people up to the age of 30 in 2017 and allocate 30 apartments, that is, 10% of non-profit apartments. By doing this, the Public Housing Fund of the City of Ljubljana has integrated the youth policy into the non-profit housing system. Ans so we have formed a systematic measure which gives young people the opportunity in the long-term to solve their housing issue. We have made another key step at the end of 2016: we have provided additional budget resources for the coming two years and published a three-year public tender for the systematic development of the youth centres network in Ljubljana. With it we are setting new standards for youth work and are making it accessible to the biggest group of young people in the City of Ljubljana, and at the same time we are uniting youth sector activities in the City of Ljubljana under the trademark of the Youth Centres Ljubljana network.