City Gateway is a charity dedicated to bringing hope to the local communities of Tower Hamlets - we run youth & women’s projects, working in partnership with neighbouring businesses.

This month we’ve been celebrating as Danny Fitzgerald was voted ESF Participant of the Year at the organisation’s award ceremony in East London - read more about his life changing story and how City Gateway and HSS Hire helped turn his life around here.

Meanwhile we’re already looking ahead to Christmas and even further to New Year’s resolutions and we’ve pulled together a few ideas for getting involved in your local community in the coming weeks and beyond!

We’re holding our first volunteer induction session early evening on Wednesday 20th January 2010 - if you’ve been thinking about volunteering personally or just want to hear more about our work and upcoming projects first-hand it’ll be a great ‘open day’ to come down and see us.

More detailed information will be sent out nearer the time but if you’re definitely interested drop Lucy an e-mail and she’ll make absolutely sure you know the details, we’ll also be updating the supporters section of our website over the coming weeks so stay tuned!

If you or your organisation are looking to give time, money, equipment, advice or more over the festive period we’d love to hear from you - across our projects there are a range of specific needs for furniture, IT equipment and extra pairs of hands you could help meet.

Christmas is a great time to get out of the office and give something back to the local community so if you’re interested in organising a team volunteering opportunity get in touch with Anne and we’ll see if there’s something we can work out together.

Having been founded purposefully to link the skills of professionals into local needs, corporate support has always been vital to our work. Many of our greatest success stories have only been made possible by partnerships with the business community both in Canary Wharf and the City, helping break down many of the barriers individuals we work with face.

If you’d like to find out more about linking your organisation into our work check out our new ‘Working in Partnership’ booklet or contact Jerry to find out more.

The biggest way organisations can support us are providing work placements for our apprenticeship scheme or making use of our catering & media social enterprises. If you are interested in offering a placement to one of our successful young people and women then contact Roxroy and he’ll tell you everything you need to know.

If you haven’t heard about or checked out Gateway Media or Flavour Gateway then make sure you do before you organise your next event or media job – they’ve got some great ideas for the Christmas period too.