Raise donations for Darlington Mencap Society - Gateway Club whenever you shop online

About our cause

The ethos of our club is to provide social and leisure activities to people aged seven and upwards with mild to profound learning difficulties. We pride ourselves on doing this in a safe, clean and inviting environment with fantastic volunteers helping us to achieve our goals and have just recently been awarded an award for accessability and inclusivitiy by D.A.D. Our membership numbers increase with each year and as such is testament to the buzz and atmosphere in the club. Activities range from table top games to darts, snooker, pool, bingo, arts and crafts, baking, discos, badminton, kurling, table tennis, football and other outdoor sports. We have been privileged to be granted funding by Cummins and this has helped us purchase our IT suite, chill out room with games consoles and our sensory room all of which we are very proud of. This along with our social evenings provides a varied and exciting range of things to do. Our canteen has both hot and cold freshments with a number of both tasty treats and healthy options. Outside of the club nights we hold social evenings and have been lucky enough to find some great acts. Miss Hollywood, who sings a range of songs, genres and adds some great costume changes to add effect, Double Trouble who again have a vast range of musical styles to give everyone something they like. We have Andy Brown for the Country and Western enthusiasts, the Musical Time Machine, who very kindly come to us each and every year as they are such a success and many more acts throughout the year. Our annual BBQ night is always enjoyable and with the added laugh of everyone dressing up in fancy dress it really does make for a good night. Most of our social evenings include pie and pea suppers, hot dogs or nibbles so we can make it a real social evening experience. We also arrange trips out to places such as Lightwater Valley, Ceramic Experience, the Sealife Centre and Discovery Museum to name just a few. The last few years we began our annual sports day which is an absolutely fantastic day for all involved and most recently our Gateway talent evening. This is open to everyone and the evening allows family and friends of the club to come for a night of entertainment provided soley by our extremely talented members, carers and volunteers. We are always looking for new places to visit and things to do and welcome ideas, so if you would like to see the club involved in a new activity or have been somewhere you think we might enjoy as a group please let us know.