HOPE FROM ASHES: Community rallies behind NPO as fire halts vital child-focused programmes

A husband-and-wife duo are picking up the pieces of a Cape Town community centre after a fire caused extensive damage to the property. While vital after-school and holiday programmes have been suspended, the couple hope to build back better.

Lindsey and Darron Nicholson have spent years turning their small farm in Redhill into a place where local children and their families can learn, grow and create sustainable futures for themselves.

But early on Tuesday, 21 August 2026, a fire broke out at the main house on the farm, which is the home base for the GLO Project, between Scarborough and Simon’s Town, causing widespread damage to the property.

The fire, which has been ruled as electrical, started in the pantry and quickly spread to the kitchen, bathroom and living room.

The pantry, kitchen, bathroom and living room suffered extensive destruction, while the rest of the house sustained significant smoke damage. Fortunately, there were no injuries to people or animals

What has served as the heartbeat of the organisation since 2018, offering after-school and holiday programmes to underprivileged children from surrounding areas, is now smouldering and uninhabitable.

The blaze has dealt a heavy blow to GLO Project and surrounding communities, including Redhill informal settlement. With the main house rendered entirely unsafe, GLO Project has been forced to suspend all its face-to-face community outreach programmes until further notice.

“We’ve had to cancel programmes at least for the next couple of months. As of right now, our long-term goal is to reopen in January. That’s how gnarly the fire was,” Lindsey Nicholson told Daily Maverick.

GLO Project (formerly known as The GLO House) was founded by Nicholson and her husband after she moved to SA, driven by a deep conviction to advocate for vulnerable youth who had been written off by society.

What began as a children’s home evolved into a holistic community model when the NGO relocated to the farm in 2021. Recognising the critical lack of educational resources and employment opportunities in Red Hill, GLO Project established two distinct pillars: GLO Outreach and GLO Farm.

GLO Outreach provides youth tutoring and life skills. Meanwhile, GLO Farm acts as a self-sustaining social enterprise – growing produce, delivering veggie boxes to local restaurants, and training parents in agricultural skills to foster local employment.

This temporary closure leaves a massive void. The underserved areas, such as Redhill informal settlement, are often overlooked and lack public transport, parks for children to play in or formal support structures.

Through GLO Outreach, about 40 local children rely on the NPO’s after-school tutoring, educational support and safe recreational spaces every week. For many of these children, the centre was also where they received one or two meals a day.

While the fire crippled the outreach facility, it also sparked a remarkable wave of solidarity. In the immediate aftermath, when the building was still warm from the blaze, members of the Redhill community were the very first on the scene to lend a helping hand.