A historic black women’s community centre is reopening 20 years after a devastating blaze destroyed the building.

ELBWO, previously known as the East London Black Women’s Organisation, first opened its doors in the 1970s and provided a range of services, including domestic violence and family aid, counselling, education and training, a Saturday school, outreach and befriending.

The stalwart organisation was forced to put these services on hold after an extensive fire engulfed and destroyed its newly refurbished building in October 2004.

While ELBWO operated from different sites, offering some vital services, the loss of its base significantly hampered its ability to continue some of its operations.

Myrtle Noble, one of the founding members and chairof the ELBWO, said it took the organisation two decades to be able to return and rebuild its premises on theoriginal site because of the prohibitive costs involved.

When asked what she remembered of the fire, she laughed and said: “What do I remember? How can I ever forget?”

She said the insurers were unable to ascertain the cause of the fire, so they initially refused to pay out for the loss. The organisation also ran into difficulties because the building had not been snagged – checked for defects and poor finishing – before the fire, but the architects and the builders were demanding to be paid.

“They took us to court because we said we don’t have the money. The insurers was saying, “we don’t know the cause so we don’t know what to pay you,” Noble said. “It’s still so painful to even talk about it.”

“It was sheer resilience, determination and just bullishness that really enabled us to carry on,” she added. “Some people would have given up a long time ago, but ELBWO is a phenomenon. We see it as a concept. It was too important to give up, because there’s no other organisation in this area that’s providing these types of services that are so desperately needed.”

ELBWO was first set up in 1978 after a conference organised by the now defunct Organisation of Women of Asian and African descent. “It came out as a result of black people in Britain feeling that their needs were not being met adequately. And there were specific areas we were really concerned about, such as education and immigration.

“Black women decided that they would actually take the lead in addressing some of these issues.”

When ELBWO was initially set up, childcare was a particularly pressing issue for black women. While some mothers either stayed at home or relied on nearby family members for support with childcare, black mothers overwhelmingly needed to work to financially support their families and did not have extended family in the country.

“We also had Saturday schools, which we called supplementary schools, where we taught children black history because we believed that in order for you to move forward, it’s important for you to know your history,” Noble said.

ELBWO will continue its collaboration with the community and other stakeholders in the new centre, including the London Borough of Newham. They are drawing up a new business plan for the future.

“We’re looking at current needs and seeing what’s changed in the past 20 years. There are more pressing needs that are different. We hope to do some work with young people, looking at challenging behaviour, also providing advocacy and specialist support for domestic violence survivors,” Noble said.

ELBWO has been bowled over by the amount of interest it has received from the local community to the reopening, Noble added. For now, they organisation is excited to get back to work.