 A professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dara New, says checks and balances between the state and society is more important in a democracy as opposed to checks among the arms of government. Professor Kew said these are the opening of a two-day conference, themed building a democracy network to support civic engagement in electoral process in Africa, which is holding in Nairobi, Kenya. The University of Dara believes democracy is nothing without civil society and the media as they create a balance to the power of the state. Pulaski V. Correspondent Mary Ann O'Connor, who is attending the conference, reports that it is organized by the U.S. State Department and Next Year's Center for Democracy, Massachusetts, and has journalists and civil society representatives from across Africa in attendance. We talk about checks and balances between legislatures and executives and judiciary, but democracy depends upon more checks and balances than just those. There needs to be a check and balance between the state and society, which means the engagement of organizations like you, it means the role of the media, journalists like you, and lastly, it means the engagement of the public, the people themselves. Democracy depends upon the people themselves, and as we were talking about the situation in America just now as Jeff mentioned, you know, we had a situation last year where the people did some things in the United States that were difficult and problematic for American democracy, and working through these issues are just as important as the independence of the judiciary, as the independence of the legislature. So it's the civic engagement dimension that we are particularly interested in working with you on. We are here to help you in terms of certain skills. We were also here to learn from you in terms of the tremendous expertise and experience that you bring to this. But most important, and even though we're going to be talking about a number of different technical skills that we think you will find very important, and I'd like to remind you that today is just the beginning of this process. We are going to be staying with you throughout the year through Zoom meetings. You know, we already had the needs assessment on.