I Built Et3am Because a Family in Alexandria Died of Despair

Amr Lotfy — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 20:30:29 +0000

In March 2026, during the last days of Ramadan, I read about a family
in my city — Alexandria, Egypt — who chose to end their lives together.

A mother. Five children. The youngest was 8 years old.

The reason: no money for food, medicine, or rent. The father had
abandoned them from abroad. The mother was dying of cancer. When hope
ran out, she saw no way forward.

I cried. Then I bought a domain name. Then I started building.

This is why Et3am (إطعام) exists.

The thing that haunts me

What haunts me most isn't the tragedy itself — it's that it was
preventable.

Not with a government program. Not with a bank loan. Not with
bureaucracy that takes weeks.

With food. Immediate, basic food — the kind that sits uneaten in
restaurant kitchens every single night. The kind that gets thrown away
from wedding halls while families a few kilometers away have nothing.

Food is the last line. When a person has food, they have one more day.
One more day means one more chance for something to change.

The formal channels — charities, social services, food banks — don't
work in emergencies. When money runs out and there is nothing to eat,
that is a crisis that needs a solution in hours, not weeks.

Et3am is that solution.

What Et3am does

Et3am (Arabic for "feeding") connects people with surplus food directly
to families in need — with zero fees, no middlemen, and in real time.

The name comes from this Quranic verse:

﴿وَيُطْعِمُونَ الطَّعَامَ عَلَى حُبِّهِ مِسْكِينًا وَيَتِيمًا وَأَسِيرًا﴾
"And they give food, in spite of their love for it, to the poor, the
orphan, and the captive." — Surah Al-Insan 76:8

It's built on the Islamic concept of Sadaqah Jariyah — continuous
charity — but designed for anyone, anywhere, regardless of religion.

How it works:

A donor posts surplus food with location and pickup window — identity stays private
A recipient finds nearby donations on a live map and reserves with one tap
Pickup is verified with a secret code — no personal information exchanged between parties

No registration fees. No commission. No data selling. No waiting.

The tech stack

Layer	Tech
Frontend	React 18 + TypeScript + Vite
Backend	Express + TypeScript
Database	PostgreSQL
Real-time	Socket.io
Auth	JWT + Firebase
Maps	Leaflet + OpenStreetMap

A few things I'm proud of technically:

Full RTL support. Arabic is right-to-left and most open-source
projects treat it as an afterthought. Et3am is Arabic-first, with
proper RTL layout throughout.

Privacy-by-design. Donors and recipients never see each other's
personal information. Pickup verification uses a one-time secret code,
not names or phone numbers. This matters — people donate more when
they feel safe, and people ask for help more when there is no shame.

Real-time map. The homepage shows a live map of available donations
near the visitor. When a new donation is posted, the marker appears
immediately via Socket.io.

Self-hostable. Any community, anywhere in the world, can run their
own instance. The entire stack runs on a single VPS with Docker Compose.

What I learned building it

Urgency is the best product spec. I didn't spend months planning.
I built the thing I wished had existed. Every feature decision came
back to one question: would this have helped that family in Alexandria?

Solo + AI agents is a real development model now. I built most of
Et3am using AI coding agents for implementation while I focused on
architecture and product decisions. A solo founder can ship a full-stack
platform this way in 2026. The barrier is not technical anymore.

Privacy builds trust faster than features. The decision to never
exchange personal data between donors and recipients was the most
discussed design choice in early feedback. Dignity matters as much as
the food itself.

Why open source

Because this problem is bigger than one developer in one city.

If Et3am can prevent one family from reaching that point of despair —
in Alexandria, in Cairo, in Karachi, in Casablanca, anywhere — then
every line of code is worth it.

Making it open means any developer anywhere can deploy it for their
community. Any translator can add their language. Any NGO can integrate
with it. The tool belongs to everyone who needs it.

What's next

More languages (Urdu, French, Bahasa on the roadmap)
Mobile apps (Capacitor shell already in the repo)
NGO partnership API
Community self-hosting guides city by city

Try it / contribute

🌐 Live: et3am.com

📦 Repo: github.com/Amr1977/et3am

❤️ Support: et3am.com/support

If you're a developer, translator, or just believe that no family
should reach the point where food is the reason they lose hope — there
is a place for you here.

جزاك الله خيراً 🤲

DEV Community: Amr Lotfy