 My work here at Cambridge Welcome Trust Research Program involves developing effective and innovative community and public engagement initiatives that will enable community members and publics to be part and parcel of research. Community and public engagement involves creating platforms, creating avenues that enable researchers on one hand and members of the community on the other hand to come together and using good communication skills and good facilitation skills, leading them through a dialogue that is mutually beneficial to both parties. Our community and public engagement strategy has two structures. On one hand, we engage the community purely as a way of giving information and receiving information from community members. So we give information, for example, in terms of what health research is, why it is important, why we are doing it in this particular region. We give information also about why it is important for community members to understand their rights, why they should be involved in research and the kind of processes and procedures that will be undertaken and them to understand that they can join research freely without coercion, leave research at any time they want to without any consequences. So that is part of information giving and why we do that. We are receiving feedback, we are receiving concerns, views from community members in the general engagement. On the other hand, we have what we call study specific engagement and in study specific engagement we basically work with scientists. It starts all the way from when a researcher is developing their concept. And we look at what is the study about and then begin at that point to think through with a scientist what kind of engagement will be needed for this type of work. And that moves on to proposal development at the point when the scientist is developing their proposal. And we sit in proposal development meetings or protocol development meetings and look at the protocol and look at what engagement strategy the scientist has put together for their study and advise whether that is appropriate. If it is not appropriate, we then guide them through what stakeholders do you need to engage, what methods do you use, do you use meetings, do you use workshops, do you go out in community meetings to talk to community members. We further move on to looking at consent documents. What information has been put into information and consent forms that is important for the research participant to know and understand. What language has been used, is it language that a participant can understand. And if the language is technical then we advise the researcher to turn it down. And then we further move on to support the translation of those consent documents from English to Swahili and vernacular languages. So those are sort of like the two broad structures and approaches that we use here at the Cambry Welcome Trust research program for our community engagement. Two key things that have come up in the last five to ten years that are important things for community and public engagement is one the issue of trust and relationship building. It is a continuous process and any person who is intending to implement community engagement activities especially when they intend to stay in a particular area for a long time they must know that community engagement is a process. Relationship building is ongoing, trust building is ongoing. One minute you have trust from the community members, the next minute you don't. Something has happened in the community that has broken that trust and you need to put in place measures to mend, to make amends with the community to remedy what has happened in the community. So it's a process that is one key thing that we are continuously learning and has been going on over the last sort of like five to ten years. The other thing that is important for community and public engagement that has come up in the last five to ten years is that researchers need to also build capacity of how they communicate with community members. They need to understand their skills, understanding the importance of engagement and what that puts into their research. The value engagement brings into their research. That's very important because community members are the people who participate in research. So it's important for a researcher to understand the lived experiences of community members or of research participants. In order for them to use that information that they get to help improve their studies. So those are sort of like the two broad areas that have come up as important areas in the last five years. It is important to invest in community engagement and engagement itself is important because on one hand you have community members who are the ones that first of all host research activities. So for an institution like Cambry Welcome Trust we are hosted within a community. Within that community we have people or individuals who will volunteer to participate in studies. So health research develops products, equipment that are going to benefit community members, are going to be used in health services for example and they have to be tested on somebody, they have to be tested on somebody has to study the human body. So research participants take time away from their work to come and do research. We are in their homes, we are in their faces regularly so it is important to fund engagement activities to develop initiatives and approaches that will empower community members to understand what they are getting involved in. We are in a middle income country, literacy levels are not the best and often we find that information that is put in scientific documents or documents where participants are required to give their consent can be technical. And so activities that enable community members to understand the entire process of research are important activities to fund. On the other hand engagement also is important because it helps ethical conduct of research. So that already is a very important factor for somebody who is thinking should I put in an investment in this type of work. It enables researchers to understand concerns from community members that help them as they think through their next research work of how best do I ensure that I am conducting my research ethically.