Evolve is a leading homelessness charity in London, providing housing and support to over 1,300 people each year.
Our aim is to help children, young people and adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to become independent and resilient. We believe in building on people’s strengths, aspirations and goals to help them break the cycle of homelessness.
We offer a programme of support tailored to meet people’s individual needs, including housing, employment and skills training, mentoring and counselling. We work with young parents and children at risk of exclusion to build the skills and resilience that can help prevent homelessness. We campaign to end street homelessness. We build affordable homes to help people move on to an independent life.
Our purpose
To make a lasting difference to lives and communities.
What we believe in
Get involved
Get the basics right
Believe in people
Embrace diversity
Be ambitious
Empower others
We are
Honest We treat homeless, vulnerable people and staff fairly, with respect and with an unconditional positive regard.
Inclusive We enable our customers to play a key role in defining and designing the work we do. We develop our managers not to just manage, but to lead their teams.
Optimistic We don’t pass judgement on customer or staff potential simply based on where they are in their lives at this point in time.
Determined We ensure that customers and staff have a solid skills foundation to build their future development on.
Creative We provide a pathway of opportunity to support customers and staff to achieve their full potential, whatever that may be.
Passionate We believe that every customer and staff member has the potential to make significant contributions to the organisation, sector, and community; be that through paid employment or volunteering their time.
Key people
Our story
Our charity began as Croydon YMCA. It was first formed in 1861 and formally launched in 1879. We became South London YMCA when Croydon YMCA merged with the YMCA of Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark. We then merged with Earls Court YMCA in 2013. As a homelessness charity in London, we have always provided somewhere for homeless people to not only live but to gain skills, employment and ultimately thrive.
We now work with homeless and vulnerable people both north and south of the Thames in the London Boroughs of Bromley, Croydon, and Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Kingston-Upon-Thames. Our customers and staff include people of all ages, men and women, and people with a rich diversity of faiths and backgrounds and we have evolved our vision and values through everyone’s view of our organisation. We rebranded in September 2015- becoming Evolve Housing + Support.
In 2017, we successfully merged with Grenfell Housing and Training and will continue to grow sustainably and responsibly until we have supported as many vulnerable people into independence as we can.
