City Gateway works with disadvantaged individuals through community events, drop-in youth clubs and apprenticeship schemes, and gives them the chance to develop their own business ideas.

[4] As of 2012[update] it employs 120 people,[5] and has about 60 corporate partners who provide apprenticeships, work experience or mentors.

In 2003 it was a small organisation on the point of being wound up when Eddie Stride, a local man who had recently graduated from Cambridge University, joined as a youth outreach worker.

Having secured approval from the trustees to keep it going for a year, he raised £40,000 from two corporate sponsors, and began training 15 "NEETs" in job-seeking skills.

[2] The Evening Standard selected City Gateway as the partner in its "Ladder for London" campaign, launched in September 2012, asking commercial companies to take on more apprentices.