Engaged engineering: humanitarian engineering and the engineers without borders' plurality

Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is an organization present in many countries. It represents, in its origin, one of the main manifestations of a specific type of engaged engineering (EE), Humanitarian Engineering (HE), which is mainly concerned with alleviating the effects of environmental disasters and wars on the affected people. In this paper, starting from a study that conjugated literature review, interviews, and bibliometric analysis of congress papers: 1) it is presented and historically contextualized the EWB Brazil case; and 2) the organization is critically analyzed according to five aspects: intervention methodology; vision of social impact; vision of technology and engineering; worldview; and the role of volunteering in the organization. As its central finding, the paper points out that EVVB Brazil remains strongly influenced by HE's principles and ideals, even though it does not make explicit the HE perspective and develop other types of EE.