OUR STAFF
Lucy Green
Head of Service & Girls Team Leader
Ellie Gauge
Senior Youth Worker & Quality Assurance Lead
Shem Frank
Inters Team Leader
Miriam Calis
Juniors Team Leader
Kwame Graves-Okokon
Seniors Team Leader
Paps Doukoure
Youth Worker
Jan Goodwin
Centre Manager
OUR TUTORS
D'Jon Henry
Dance Coach
Tony Carnegie
Studio Technician
OUR VOLUNTEERS
Sam Spriddell
Volunteer
Sofia Mori
Volunteer
Ginevra Celestre
Volunteer
OUR CHAIR & TRUSTEES
Millicent Grant
Chair
Biography
As chair Millie has oversight for overseeing the direction and good governance of the club. She grew up in South London and has had a long association with KYC.
She first started voluntary youth work at KYC as a leader in the seniors section then joined the management team. She was vice chair for a number of years before being appointed Chair. She is a Chartered Legal Executive – and is the 2017/18 President of her professional body.
She won the UK Legal Diversity Award for BSN Lawyer of the year 2017 and was Recognised as a 2017 Woman of Achievement by Women of the Year. She has trained and practised as a personal and executive coach and has used her skills and experience to support the youth Centre and participate in training as part of TYLAP (KYC’s Trainee Young Leader Apprenticeship Programme).
She is committed to creating an environment where members can be inspired and supported to develop and fulfil their potential.
Chris Giles
Trustee
Biography
Chris Giles – Service Delivery Trustee at KYC – with an extensive background in Probation & Youth Justice.
Currently working as a project & development officer within youth justice teams in Lewisham & Brent Councils. Sees KYC as a catalyst to help young people enjoy themselves and realise their potential. Enjoys life – walks – music – and the odd cream cake!
Chris Saunders
Trustee
Biography
I started out as a young volunteer youth worker at the Knights in 1973! Having run teams, projects and holidays for over 25 years, I eventually became Chair. I am now still as involved as ever in my new role looking after the Centre.
I love this place and the work it does for the local community. Having recently retired from a 40 year career in children’s social work, I am as busy as ever! Thank you to everyone who helps us.”
David Dowie
Trustee
Biography
I have worked in young people’s services both in the voluntary and local authority sector for the last 40 years. My last post was manager of Integrated Youth Support Servic.es in Medway in North West Kent where I managed the Youth Service, Youth Offending Service and commissioned the Information Advice and Guidance Service for young people.
I was asked to take up a trustee role at Knights YC when I retired in 2017. My Trustee role is that of Quality assurance and young people’s voice.
On retiring I wanted to keep an involvement with grass roots young people’s services and the opportunity at Knights YC was one that I had no hesitation in accepting.
Young people’s services are required to provide a safe space for young people to socialise with the opportunity to get informal advice, guidance and support to vulnerable young people 8-19 years, who are at risk of a challenging community environment, peer pressure or family dysfunction.
I would like for knights YC to become an organisation that enables young people to fully participate in the decision making processes that guide the youth centre and to put young people’s voice at the heart of its work.
Deborah Gibbs
Trustee
Biography
Geraldine Tovey
Trustee
Biography
Geraldine Tovey joined the Knights Youth Centre board in April 2021. She is currently the Communications, Policy and Membership Manager at London Funders and has been working in the charity sector since graduating from the University of Birmingham in 2012. Geraldine joined the board because she is passionate about widening opportunities for young people and is keen to give back to her adopted home of Streatham.
Hakeem Duckworth-Porter
Trustee
Biography
Hakeem Duckworth-Porter is currently the Founder & Director of HDP Consulting, a Lambeth-based strategic business consultancy that advises small business leaders and entrepreneurs in the community.
Hakeem is also the Secretary of the Streatham Labour Ethnic Minority Forum (EMF). The EMF is committed to representing and engaging Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities in local and national politics. It also ensures more BAME candidates are selected to be local councillors, Assembly Members, MPs and Board Members.
Prior to this, Hakeem previously worked as a Senior Youth Mentor for the Challenge programme run by the National Citizenship Service. Having worked as a Senior Youth Mentor and grown up on the Clapham Park East Estate where the KYC is located, Hakeem strongly believes and knows the value of youth centres in the community.
John Saunders
Trustee
Biography
Vice Chair and Member of the Finance team.
Now retired following 40 years working in the London Insurance market with large Corporate clients.I have now been involved at Knights one way or another for over 50 years. Whilst a member of the Seniors, I became involved as a Volunteer on various club nights ultimately moving on to become the Team Leader of the Inters and Senior sections.
For the last 25 years plus I have served as a member of the Management Team/Trustee Board. Knights is well and truly part of my DNA and is a great place to work and help the young people of Clapham Park
Martin Long
Trustee
Biography
Martin is a Chartered Engineer with an MSc in Project Management from Reading University. He spent 15 years with a consultant engineering firm Arups.
In that period he lived in London, Los Angeles and Istanbul. He joined property developer Stanhope as a development director in 1998 where he led three major commercial office developments in the City. In July 2013 Martin became a freelance development manager and formed his own company called Ashfold.
Most recently he completed the development of a new £10 Million pool and sports centre at Windlesham House School in Sussex. Martin lives in Wimbledon and has two children in secondary school.
Martin is the son of Leslie Long who was part of the leadership team when the Youth Centre first relocated to Streatham Place in 1959
Rhiannon Sawyer
Trustee
Biography
Rhiannon Sawyer is currently Director for England Children’s Services for one of the largest national children’s charities, Action for Children, overseeing 1700 staff and c.300 services including children’s homes, early help, community centres and youth at risk services. Prior to this Rhiannon spent a year as Assistant Director of the London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), delivering a pan-London public health approach to reducing violence for the Mayor of London. Before the VRU, Rhiannon spent three years in the policing as Head of the National Policing Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme, which works with all police forces in England and Wales to enable them to develop their responses to children & vulnerable adults across lots of different types of harm including domestic abuse, trafficking, gangs and sexual offences. Rhiannon previously worked as senior manager at The Children’s Society, overseeing multiple programmes delivering safeguarding across London in relation to child abuse, missing children, county lines, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and trafficking. Prior to this Rhiannon’s career was mainly in the youth sector in youth centres, schools & children’s homes and also in the prison and community-based criminal justice system delivering interventions and safeguarding support to adults, young people and children. Rhiannon has also delivered work in refuges, support groups and pupil referral units.
Robert Quinn
Trustee
Biography
Rob joined the Board of Trustees as Treasurer in 2016 where he is responsible for the overall management of the finances, including budget creation and approval, finance processing, the production of interim reports and approval of the year-end annual accounts. Although not a qualified accountant, he took on the role after retiring from a 35-year career in banking. This began with eight years in branch banking, including three years working with business and corporate clients with the associated analysis of balance sheets and accounts. This was followed by a move into the bank’s IT department, first as a systems analyst working on customer accounting systems, followed by eight years project management experience in which he was involved in both staff recruitment / management and controlling / reporting on budgets ranging from £75k to over £1M. His work concluded with twelve years involved in strategic architecture and high level banking systems design with extensive involvement in both presenting to, and participating in, internal governance boards with their associated controls and risk management at all levels within the bank.
OUR PATRON
George Clarke is an architect, creative director of George Clarke + Partners, and a founder of TV production company Amazing Productions. George is the presenter of several very successful series for television, including Channel 4’s Restoration Man and The Great British Property Scandal and George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces.
George says:
“I was delighted to agree formally my role as patron to Knights Youth Centre in 2016 and to support the wonderful work that is being done within the community by the KYC team. I, like many others, feel the importance of centres like Knights are vital to the social and mental wellbeing of young people within our communities and charities like Knights Youth Centre provide not only a safe place for young people to meet, but manage and run the extensive outreach work done within the wider local area.
“I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to everyone who supports Knights Youth Centre and hope we can continue to have your support over the coming years to ensure the focus and dedicated work in the community can continue.”