A CHARITY fighting to get jobs for unemployed school-leavers in London’s East End is giving a presentation to cabinet ministers and top business leaders in Downing Street. City Gateway is demonstrating a way to tackle unemployed youngtsters who are not in further education or training

By Mike Brooke

A CHARITY fighting to get jobs for unemployed school-leavers in London's deprived East End is giving a presentation to cabinet ministers and top business leaders in Downing Street.

City Gateway, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, is demonstrating a way to tackle increasing numbers of unemployed teenagers and those in their early 20s who are not in further education or training.

The presentation at 11 Downing Street on Wednesday (Oct 28) is against a backdrop of national statistics with jobless 18 to 24 year-olds without prospects having risen to 100,000 in the past 12 months.

But the charity's pioneering work in the East End has seen figures in Tower Hamlets buck the trend almost halve from 15 to eight per cent in just three years.

Yet there's no room for complacency, says the charity's chief Eddie Stride.

"Tower Hamlets remains the third-most deprived borough in the country, despite Canary Wharf and the 2012 Olympics," he said. "A quarter of the working-age population have no formal qualifications."

City Gateway runs a 'partnership' with businesses in Canary Wharf and the City which has disadvantaged youngsters getting apprenticeship placements within multinational firms.

Tory Party leader David Cameron declared earlier this year that he wanted to see "more City Gateways come in and take this recession by the scruff of the neck" to get youngsters into work.