Family Gateway

Our vision is to be at the forefront of improving life chances for children and families through the development of community-led solutions.” Family Gateway is an award-winning child poverty charity that puts local people in the lead and develops innovative solutions to community problems. Formally known as Tyne Gateway, the organisation was originally developed in 2009 by North Tyneside Council and South Tyneside Council as part of a Child Poverty Unit Innovation pilot project. The idea behind the pilots was that in order to stop child poverty increasing new innovative approaches needed to be developed and tested. The Family Gateway model of Community Entrepreneurship was fresh and applied all of the principles of Asset Based Community Development as it recognised the strengths and knowledge that existed in communities and utilised them to design and develop new approaches to tackling child poverty. The success of the model that underpinned the project and the evidence to support it led to the development of Family Gateway as a charity and limited company which has gone on to win a number of awards which are described in the Evidence section of the website. The model is based on the ‘Barefoot Professional’ model which was first used among health workers in China and then further developed in the1970s through the Barefoot College which was developed as a response to poverty in rural India. The principle was that villages are more likely to become sustainable if villagers themselves develop entrepreneurial skills and community-led solutions to problems they face.