Israel has one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. Today, approximately 1.25 million older adults live in Israel – a number projected to reach nearly 2 million within less than two decades. Yet despite this rapid demographic shift, most systems and services remain structurally unprepared for an extended life stage following retirement. Retirement is still widely framed as the end of productive life – even though older adults in Israel typically enjoy nearly 20 years of active life after retirement, bringing with them capacity, experience, and a strong desire to remain engaged and contributory. This structural gap carries significant personal and societal costs: a sharp rise in loneliness and morbidity, increasing public expenditures, and erosion of social cohesion and community resilience.
Yeshotanu (“We Are Here”) was created to shift this trajectory by advancing a new paradigm: older adulthood as a stage of contribution, capability, and continued engagement rather than decline. Its goal is to expand meaningful post-retirement pathways in employment, entrepreneurship, volunteering, and civic engagement, while influencing institutional design and public policy for long term change. By reframing aging as a strategic asset, Yeshotanu helps prevent isolation and disengagement, strengthen economic participation, and reinforce social cohesion.
Through a Collective Impact model, Yeshotanu drives coordinated cross-sector change, working with employers and public institutions to redesign retirement as a structured transition, and expanding opportunities for continued engagement for seniors. It advances a public narrative that challenges ageism and reframes older adulthood as a stage of capability and contribution and makes research and applied knowledge accessible to help shape supportive policy. Yeshotanu also leads a municipal effort to prevent decline by integrating older adults into meaningful roles and reinforcing community-based frameworks for active aging. By taking a proactive, system-level approach, Yeshotanu helps ensure longer lives become a source of social strength and community vitality.
