*4.1. Rethinking and Redefining Community Engagement during Disasters*

Community involvement with townships is nothing new for us. Since 1996, students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) have worked with the Bhambayi residents through the non-profit organization UKZNCORE (UKZN Community Outreach and Research). Using African-centred psychological interventions, MA'AT Institute was most recently founded to address COVID-19 and any other related psychosocial difficulties. We can attest that providing psychosocial services to communities during a global pandemic provided us with some expertise in dealing with disasters such as floods. However, we did not anticipate that disasters of this magnitude would occur simultaneously.
