Although secrecy in Egyptian society is highly valued, it has reached the point of fear of intolerance and sarcasm. So how do Egyptians get access to support without the dread of being judged?
This is where Cairo Confessions comes in.
In an attempt to make Egyptian society more tolerant and more aware of the different struggles of individuals, the Cairo Confessions team allows people to submit confessions anonymously and receive advice and words of support from strangers.
"We want to teach people to accept others and be less judgmental of issues they may not understand," the team told StepFeed.
"We also aim to enable people to be more open and talk about the variety of issues they face in order to break social stigmas and taboos," they added, explaining that such secrecy impacts society as a whole negatively and severely.
Even though the team is small, the influence they've had on the Egyptian society is large. Due to their reliance on volunteers, there are currently 5 active members and 5 inactive ones. The founder of Cairo Confessions, software engineer Mohamed Ashmawy, lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while the chief of operations, solar specialist Mohamed Allam, lives in Berlin.
The remaining members are psychologist Sherif Othman, Mazen Khalil, Engy El Hoshy, Abdelrahman Kafoury, Abdelrahman Ahmed and Nora Salem, who dedicate all their free time to push for positive change within society.
Due to their immense success with more than 61,000 likes on Facebook, the Cairo Confessions team is currently in the process of creating an online platform to reach a wider audience, enabling a larger number of society members to feel safe to share their personal struggles.
"We decided to create the website as an anonymous social network that will serve the same purpose as the Facebook page," they explained, adding that the website would include extra features such as profiles, rankings and more.
Following a large number of confessions from people saying that they were severely depressed and contemplating suicide, the Cairo Confessions team is hoping to establish a suicide hotline that people could use to have a one-on-one conversation with trained professionals and possibly prevent untimely deaths.
"We always considered creating a hotline. However after a preliminary study it was determined that it would require more resources than we already have," the team explained. "However, we are still interested in the idea and in the meantime, we try to keep any form of contact in cases that require follow-ups."