An east London charity has joined up with the Evening Standard for its latest campaign calling on businesses in London to offer young people apprenticeships.

A spokesman from City Gateway told civilsociety.co.uk that the charity had a “longstanding” partnership with the newspaper having been involved with the Dispossessed campaign in 2010, and provided case studies for the Get London Reading campaign earlier this year.

City Gateway runs pre-apprenticeship courses and organises apprenticeships and further training for young people. Last year it helped 300 young people and hopes to increase that number this year after receiving funding from the Department of Education for attaining academy status.

It currently works with about 60 corporate partners – not all of whom offer apprenticeships, but that offer support in other ways, such as volunteering or work experience. The charity said it did not have a target number of apprenticeship providers in mind but was looking for "quality partners with whom we can form an ongoing partnership".

The Evening Standard’s campaign highlights that there are 120,000 unemployed young people in the capital and 300,000 companies. It says that if just one in three employers take on a single apprentice, the youth unemployment problem would be tackled.

The charity said it has put in place measures to deal with the increased interest from young people looking for work but could not confirm what these are as it is still finalising the details.

This is the third high-profile campaign with charity partners that the Evening Standard has run since 2010. The Dispossessed campaign raised £4.5m to set up a fund run by the Community Foundation Network – the project won the Charity Award for grantmaking in 2011. The Get London Reading campaign earlier this year was run with Volunteer Reading Help to encourage people to volunteer.