Investigating Community Engagement Practices in Short-Term Humanitarian Engineering Projects

It is well known that community engagement is critical for the success of humanitarian engineering (HE) projects. Short-term HE projects require special attention to community contexts and capacity to ensure solutions solve particular needs and can be maintained long after implementation. This manuscript contributes to our team's long-term goal of improving community engagement across all stages of professional volunteer led short-term HE projects, including the development of more granular recommendations and metrics for community engagement evaluation and volunteer accountability. In this study, we evaluated 43 projects that received grants in 2022 from a large HE organization for groups of volunteers to implement short-term projects. While most projects (70<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">%</sup>) engaged communities through training sessions after implementation, our analysis identified critical gaps in community engagement during early project stages, and only three projects (7<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">%</sup>) described engaging with their community throughout all stages. We identified an opportunity for volunteer teams to expand the community members and stakeholders they engage during a project, as most projects focused on one community partner rather than considering those who may be directly impacted by the project. Overall, our findings indicate critical opportunities for support and incentives for professional volunteers to increase community engagement during HE projects.