It’s Gala time again!

Next Friday, 5th September, we’re holding our annual Gala at the beautiful Highbury Hall.

The Gala is an excellent opportunity to showcase our work to commissioners and decision-makers, showing the difference our staff make to people’s lives, and how that impacts on the services within Birmingham. But it’s also an opportunity to give ourselves a little treat and say thanks to our colleagues and partners for a job well done!

Awards for clients, staff and partners

A big part of the Gala is the awards ceremony.

Each year, staff nominate clients they’ve worked with who have achieved success on their programme during the previous year. It’s up to our staff what “success” might mean. It could be losing lots of weight, overcoming obstacles to complete a programme, gaining their first qualification or volunteering for the very first time.

Without the hard work and commitment of our staff, we wouldn’t be able to reach the clients that we do, so some staff have also nominated colleagues whose work they feel has been outstanding in the category of ‘Making a Positive Social Impact’.

Working together with other organisations and partners means that Gateway has been able to do more than we would have done on our own, so we also have Partnership Awards. Each of our departments has nominated one partner to receive an award, and we can announce those here today:

• Health Trainers are presenting a Partnership award to Birmingham South Central CCG, for the work they’ve done together on reinvigorating the Personal Health Forum (Long Term Conditions Group)
• Lighten Up has nominated Birmingham University, with whom we have been collaborating to identify new and more effective ways to help people lose weight
• The award from our Pregnancy Outreach Worker Service (POWS) is going to Birmingham City Council Pupil Connect, who have broadened the reach of the Teen POW service by linking us to pregnant young women who are in the school system
• Employment Access Skills and Training (EAST) are presenting their Partnership award to the National Offender Management Service, Drake Hall Women’s Prison, for introducing interpreting as a skill for offenders to develop, to their prisoners pre- and post-release.

A formal ‘do’

This year’s Gala will be at the picturesque Highbury Hall, a beautiful manor house venue run by Birmingham City Council.

Last year, we took a chance on holding a daytime Garden Party but, we must admit, it just didn’t seem to have the same pizazz as Galas in previous years. It wasn’t helped by the weather!

So this year, we felt that we should return to our old format and we’re holding a formal evening do.

Our Gala co-ordinators have worked hard to organise a great party, so we’re really looking forward to it. The location is amazing, the menu looks divine, and the drinks (be they orange juice or fizz) will be plentiful. Cheers!