In March 2020, when the president announced that South Africa would be going into a lockdown, a lot of uncertainty ensued. At the time I had just started working for a non-profit organisation that deals with sexual and reproductive health for adolescent girls and young women in the Klipfontein District. By chance, I came across the Philippi East Community Action Network (CAN), as it was known at the time. I probed for more information and traced the collective to Cape Town Together on Facebook. A few days later we started our own Site C CAN with a few volunteers as a means of establishing a local, rapid response to Covid-19.