Our annual showcase is a celebration of successful diversity and hope across Tower Hamlets – an opportunity for our staff, apprentices and trainees to give our partners, friends and supporters a glimpse into just some of what City Gateway has achieved this past year, in our own unique style!

The event takes place on 27th May and is hosted in one of RBS's buildings on Bishopsgate, by Liverpool Street Station. The night starts at 6pm with refreshments and a chance to speak with some of our young people and see more about our showcased projects. The evening focuses around a short formal presentation, starting at 6.30pm, with speeches from Stephen Timms (Rt Hon Minister of State for Employment and MP for East Ham) and also from some of the people who have benefited from our courses. Light food will be served after the presentation when there'll also be a chance to see some of the work produced by our trainees.

For security reasons if you are able to attend our Showcase Event then we will need to have your name on the guest list in advance of the event: please click here to email Jerry with your details if you are hoping to attend.

At the end of last month Gordon Brown and a certain mayoral candidate came over to Canary Wharf to promote Crossrail, launch a push for more apprenticeship schemes and pat each other on the back.

We did our best to stay clear of the politics but took with us half a dozen young people from our Limehouse Youth Club who were all able to meet both gentlemen and chat to them about the issues they see affecting the East end and the solutions they'd want put in place. It was a rare chance to bend the ears of some of the countries most powerful people and ties in well with our work as we look to expand our work based Export course and the apprenticeships it links into.

Click here to read the BBC News article about the event

The numbers attending our youth club in the shadow of Canary Wharf have now doubled since the end of last year and it's been great to see many local young people going one step further and volunteering to help us run more successful programmes at the centre. We've also expanded the range of services we offer including new trampoline sessions and a cookery course endorsed by new government policy.

This past month also saw us becoming one of just a handful of sites in the Borough where young people are allowed to come and register reports of hate crimes they have experienced/witnessed – another sign of our expanding relationship with the local police. We also had a visit from the BBC who came to see the launch of the Government's COO-L leisure initiative which kicked off with an event run by our sports social enterprise, Gateway Motion, at the Limehouse facility.

One of the best examples of success we get is when women from our courses feel so empowered by them that they stick around long after their course is finished and help others get through theirs – this month a graduate from our confidence building course came on board and says that the course has really changed her life and encouraged her to try new things. We've also started an introduction to fitness coaching which is being taught by Heide, herself a graduate from City Gateway's Export course.

Our healthy living funday was a massive success with over 100 local residents taking part in a range of activities themed around healthy living. A clown, a bouncy castle and some crazy 'Speed, Agility, Quickness' sessions from West Ham United's Barry Saville were on offer for children, while their mums took advantage of free hand massage, gro-bags, dental screening and breastfeeding advice. We had over 30 women sign up to our courses and activities and have already seen 7 of them start a nutrition and food safety course last week.

An overwhelmingly successful Export course came to an end this month – three cohorts (IT, media and sport) each completed level 2 training in their chosen specialism as well as a unit of the 'Certificate in Career Planning'. Each trainee also undertook 21 days of work experience with our own social enterprises and with a range of corporate partners across the City including Allen & Overy, ABN AMRO and BLM. We are now working hard on progressions to ensure the trainees progress onto a positive outcome.

We are already gearing up for the next Export course which will kick off on the 28th April and are looking for corporate partners who might have volunteers willing to get involved in the employability and work experience parts of the course - could it be your office we are visiting next? Reply to this e-mail if you want to find out more!

We've been delighted to invite Darren 'in sheep's clothing' Wolf onto the team this year taking on the new role of Chief Operations Officer and many of the responsibilities of our former deputy CEO Dave Pilkington.

Darren has come to work with us following a successful career with the City YMCA and is already bringing some real professional gloss to our organisation as we look to build the foundations needed to support the exponential growth we are continuing to see.