EMPWR addresses MENA’s mental health crisis

Brief Description: EMPWR merges with Microsoft and Wamda to develop the MENA region’s first ever mental health report on entrepreneurs in the tech ecosystem.

Full Description:

Before COVID-19, many individuals and businesses didn’t account for psychological health to be an area of interest, nor significance. If anything positive came out of the catastrophic coronavirus pandemic, it’s the heightened attention on mental wellbeing and the economic burden it can create once neglected.

In the case of EMPWR, a digital media agency that focuses on mental health, Ally Salama, EMPWR’s CEO,  noticed several challenges in the Egyptian mental health ecosystem which resulted in a region-wide passion for solving the psychological health crisis within Arab communities. First, there’s a flaw in the navigation around access to mental health services. People would often rely on word of mouth and lack trust in the credibility of practicing professionals due to the poor practicing standards which originated from little-to-no presence of regulatory boards ensuring patients were to receive a benchmark standard of  psychological WellCare. 

Another underlying issue in the market was the issue of accessibility, especially experienced by youth in the Arab countries, where 60% of the region account for people under the age of 25. Many of the younger generation have a growing interest and acceptance towards mental health yet very few can actually access or afford the services they are seeking out. 

With presence in UAE and Egypt, Salama’s approach to EMPWR was not to capitalize on the youth demographic, but to create online engagements and generate widespread awareness through the creation of culturally relevant and youth sensitive educational content on social platforms to earn the youth’s trust while building the first prototype of EMPWR. With a rising young population facing no addressable solutions in the ecosystem, EMPWR is filling a need that seems to have little-to-no visible plans of being tackled in the near future. They offer affordable, easy-to-access and with 100% confidentiality guaranteed service to a growing population that is seen to have little disposable income and poor purchasing power.

Today, after multiple on-ground and online activations, EMPWR has published its debut mental health report with Microsoft and Wamda to address the challenges around mental health in the tech-ecosystem, a field that many youth aspire to set foot and thrive in. 

EMPWR will continue building the startups’ reporting system throughout the introduction of it’s MVP, which can enable policymakers and major stakeholders such as educational and governmental institutions to provide proactive data-driven solutions to combat rising challenges in communities. By 2030, the economic burden of mental health in MENA is estimated to exceed $2 Trillion; thus, the pressing need for innovation around mental health and data-driven solutions as well as strategic call-to-actions are crucial to EMPWR personal and professional entities.