Лондондық жастар клубы: Девас клубының тарихы мен қызметі

English youth club

The Devas Club for Young People (the Devas Institute until 1970) is a youth club in Battersea, south London, England, which provides sporting, educational and creative opportunities for disadvantaged youth.

The Devas Institute was founded by Jocelyn Devas, a student at University College, Oxford, The club was originally called University College House and was in a room above a coffee shop in Stewarts Road. Following Jocelyn Devas's death eighteen months after founding the club, in a climbing accident on the Matterhorn, his father offered a substantial endowment if his college friends would carry on the work in Battersea. Oxford House helped the club early in its development. The Devas Institute was constituted first under a scheme set up by the Charities Commissioners in 1901, when University College Oxford and then Battersea Polytechnic Institute provided members of the Management Council for the Devas Institute. The institute moved to larger premises in Thessally Road in Nine Elms in 1907. During World War I, the Devas Institute site was used as an air raid shelter. The comprehensive redevelopment of the Nine Elms area to build New Covent Garden Market prompted a further move, to a purpose built building on Stormont Road near Lavender Hill in 1969, in a notably Brutalist architectural style. It was renamed the Devas Club in 1970.

The Devas Club is primarily targeted at young people between 11 and 19, with specialist programmes targeted at the age range 8 to 11. It aims to enable young people, particularly the disaffected and at risk, to reach their full potential as responsible, talented individuals and as active participants in the community. The building includes a gym, a recording studio (the Stormont Studios), performance space, cooking and computer facilities, a range of meeting and rehearsal rooms, and a basketball court on the roof. The club is a registered charity (Registration Number 1129419) with the stated purpose of "providing a youth centre for the purpose of helping and educating young persons under the age of 25 years through their physical, mental and spiritual capacities that they may grow to full maturity as individuals and members of society and that their conditions of life may be improved." The Devas Club has maintained close links with University College, as well as with the Devas family, over the years. It has also aimed to reduce its energy use.