Crossroads Youth & Community Association is, by third sector standards, an old Charity. It was established in 1967 as a registered charity to deliver youth and community work alongside the people of Gorbals and Govanhill areas of Glasgow. The collective who established Crossroads was called The Gorbals Group. They were a group of Church of Scotland ministers which formed in 1957 with the radical plan to live in the same tenements, work the same jobs, and live amongst the people of Gorbals. The idea was to be present with people in terms of equality rather than from a position of status, and to directly share in the struggles for justice and dignity with local folk.

Although today Crossroads staff are not expected to adopt the radical residency approach of the Gorbals Group ministers, they are expected to uphold the original values of equality, dignity, and justice which underpins Crossroads’ youth and community work. Our mission statement has remained the same since it was articulated by one of the charity’s founders in 1967: Everyone has the right to live gloriously. Whatever in society makes this impossible must be challenged; whatever in the individual may make it possible must be nurtured and strengthened. 

The charity was conceived by and for local people who felt best placed to identify and deliver solutions that meet their needs in their community. Currently, Crossroads is led by a Board of eight volunteers who live locally and/or care about the welfare and wellbeing of the Gorbals and Govanhill communities. 

The ‘right to live gloriously’ is the keystone of our work. Above all we recognise the right of everyone and every community to have broadly equal access to the material and social means necessary to live a meaningful and flourishing life. A flourishing life is one in which an individual’s and community’s capacities and talents have developed in ways that enable them to pursue their life goals, so that in some general sense they have realised their potential and purposes.