Community Engagement Workshop

Kilifi had the rare opportunity of hosting an International Community Engagement Workshop which brought together participants from all over the world.

The 40 participants were drawn from 8 countries in Africa, South East Asia, Europe and North America and the workshop was held from February 28- March 4, 2011. It was organised by the Social Behavioral Research (SBR) team in partnership with the Mahidol Research Programme in Thailand,  the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Ethox Centre at Oxford University.

The participants came together to share ideas, experiences and needs regarding community engagement, consent interventions, including monitoring and evaluation and related social science methodologies. They learned about ethical theories and approches and how recent community engagement frameworks can be incorporated into implementation activities and social science studies. They developed proposals for future research, including comparative studies and considered transferability of studies to date. There were also discussions on the possibility and practicabilities of establishing an international network of groups working on community engagement which might, for example, agree to develop on-line collaborative resources for the sharing of experiences and training materials.