Moving to a new city, where you don’t really know anyone? There is a lot of excitement when you open a new chapter in your life, as well as many practical and emotional challenges that lay ahead to settle and integrate.
Today, more and more of us are living multi country lives, moving abroad, living transient lives, and travelling outside comfort zones for fun, love, work, study or necessity…
and we want to be happy!
Knowing that isolation and feelings of being overwhelmed come hand in hand with any relocation, what is a better way to overcome these very low lows and fast track to the highs which make this way of living so worth it? We as Girl Gone International believe that the key to this is to have friends and support, to belong to a community of other women who live how and where you do, who get it.
So what is Girl Gone International?
We are all on a chaotic journey, as much mentally, spiritually, emotionally as geographically! Travelling through this part of our lives with friends and peers who have each other’s back and discovering that your home is not always a place – it is a feeling, friendship, belonging, understanding and something which you carry with your wherever you go.
This is where the idea of Girl Gone International stemmed from. We are now an organization which operates and has a presence globally. We organize 4000+ events all over the world per year, represent, connect, support and empower over 250,000 active members in over 150+ cities, have over 8 million monthly social media reach. We are also one of the 100 organizations selected for the Facebook Community Leadership Fellowship.
We are a co-created community and everyone gets involved for the love of it!
GGI in short is friendship, connection, support, belonging, empowerment, happy vibes & community. Our purpose is to build, connect, inspire and support all GGIs: our tribe of the new generation of women living abroad for whatever circumstances, who knows how important it is to create, to give and to empower each other.
We want to spread friendship far and wide, so no woman has to ever feel alone as she ventures out into this big huge chaotic ever-revolving world we all call home! We all have each other’s backs!
Go anywhere and belong everywhere is what sums up this kind of community we want to build.
What do we do?
We host a range of meetups every month which brings together like-minded international women in your city to revel in common experience and make friends and connect with one another -come strangers, leave friends! We have minimum one main GGI meetup per month – After Work Drinks / Girls’ Night / Brunch plus options of additional meetups which anyone in the group can suggest.
Events are free as we believe friendship and the need to belong is not something you should be charged for. We offer opportunities for women to learn about and gain experience in social media, event organisation, writing and other skills.
We are non-competitive and work in synergy with many other groups, communities and organisations for the benefit of any woman living internationally.
What do I do as a community manager and why?
After moving to Barcelona and Stockholm to study and then for work, I came back to Istanbul. Suddenly, I felt something was missing. I found out later that I am now considered a repat (as opposed to expat), and I missed meeting new people and the sense of community I found abroad.
I wanted to create the same sense I found back in those countries which was so valuable and wanted to give back to an international community that helped me so much. That’s why I reached our founder of Girl Gone International Anne Scott saying that I wanted to take GGI with me to İstanbul.
My mission for Istanbul Girl Gone International is to launch, nurture, connect and empower the local community in İstanbul, create fun and simple meet ups, spark friendships so we all can feel happy feel that sense of community in this city we all call home.
About what I do as the Community Manager, I am managing communications with GGI members, other city Community Managers and the International Team. Also I am responsible for organizing events and getting involved in event planning – planning or supporting the planning of meetups for the city community, making sure they are interesting to our members, event promotion – inviting and managing RSVPs and answering questions, producing event posters and text where needed.
Then of course my favourite thing to do would be event hosting part – either hosting or supporting event hosts, communicating with event hosts and managing social media – creating and growing GGI’s presence locally and globally, content creation.
Last but not least the right atmosphere – creating a welcoming, friendly community that everyone raves about is what’s most important to me!
If you are new in the city? Say hi! Seeking new friends? Come to our meetups or shout out in our page! Join our Facebook group!
For more info on Girl Gone International, read our magazine, check out our Facebook page, our website, and our Instagram (#girlgoneinternational).
