Started a little over a month ago in light of recent incidents, an anonymous group of Egyptian women came together with some of Egypt’s key figures in the party scene in order to launch #WeSeeYou, Egypt’s first party safety campaign. Initially #WeSeeYou were going to distribute their list of guidelines directly to party promoters, though through a series of discussions this initiative evolved into a full party safety campaign, which launched today on instagram.

Egypt’s party scene and surrounding community is ultimately quite small, and so such an initiative has the potential to truly change our local scene for the better, and while over the past few years some party organizers have attempted similar measures, #WeSeeYou represents the most comprehensive, unified movement focused on upgrading Egypt’s music scene, and bringing it closer to the international safety standards expected from any live music event. 

The full list of guidelines is set to be announced next week, though #WeSeeYou gave SceneNoise a brief overview of some of the key policies that they will be implementing at events across Cairo. 

1) Ensuring that event staff are trained in bystander intervention; knowing how to deal with cases of harassment in person, knowing how to get directly involved if they see anything happen, and not falling into passivity and standing by. 

2) Assembling a comprehensive blacklist of offenders, harassers and the like, ensuring that such people are identified and banned from all events in the scene, across the board.

3) Bringing on board a team of trained volunteers to be present at events around the country, and to act as a first line of defence, ensuring that event attendees feel secure reporting any incidents immediately, and have offending individuals immediately removed from the premises.

4) Implementing an anonymous hotline, run exclusively by women, in order to provide a safe space for women to come forward with their complaints after the fact whilst encouraging women to feel secure in knowing that they will be protected by a barrier of privacy and anonymity when coming forward.

Update: #WeSeeYou has since added to the list of initiatives, including:-

- Partygoers that are visibly intoxicated or have been over-served will need to be cut-off from the party's services.

- Code words will be plastered inside of women’s bathrooms at venues or circulated amongst female partygoers prior to the start of the event.

- Safe zones will be set up within venues for women to stay in if, at any time, they feel threatened or intoxicated.

- Identification will be checked for all partygoers prior to the start of the event.

Aimed at making Egypt’s dancefloors a safer space, #WeSeeYou is an essential step forwards for the country's musical communities, and SceneNoise encourages all artists and promoters to get actively involved in changing things for the better.

Follow @WeSeeYou.EG on instagram.