“It has been a rough year” might just be the understatement of the decade, but girl, it has been a rough year!

As you probably know, the NomadHer app was launched in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. That means that our community was growing online, but we couldn’t meet face to face. It was driving us CRAZY.

In July, we finally managed to do a small gathering with other girls from NomadHer in Paris. Oh, we were so happy. We met at the Hoxton Hotel for a drink. It was a beautiful evening shared with some really cool people, all with different stories and dreams, but bound together by our love of traveling and our desire to connect. The vibe was relaxed, joyful, supportive. It felt like exhaling after holding your breath for too long. Ahhh. Such a relief.

We wanted more.

In 2020, the Female Globetrotter Festival had to happen online (thanks Covid), but this year, with restrictions lessening and vaccination advancing, we wanted to create an offline event to engage a bigger part of the community, and meet face to face after so long. And so it began, the planning for the 2021 Female Globetrotter Festival… OFFLINE, hell yeah.

Our community had been growing in size but also in variety, and Covid left exposed the huge amount of privilege and inequality that still governs our world. It was clearer than ever that we needed to provide a space for everybody to shine and tell their stories. We decided that this year’s theme for the festival would be Diversity and Inclusion.

So how did we choose our lovely panelists? As we said before: our community is very diverse already. All we had to do was reach out! We started going through our NomadHer app and read profiles, see who would be around and could bring interesting stories. We also looked around Station F, the startup incubator where NomadHer is based. There are so many inspiring projects and women in there! That’s how we found Monia, from Jua&Co, for example, or Negar, from Colourful Zone.

Then it was promotion stage. We promoted the event on every platform we could think of… several times: our app, Slack, Facebook, Instagram, even the toilets at Station F suffered from our vandalism when we put stickers on the stall doors. Station F staff were not happy about it. But we got the message across. Mission accomplished.

The last week before the festival was very hectic but probably the most fun of all! We sank deep into planning mode and started coming up with colourful ideas and details. The team went to a stationary store and came back with stickers of all colours and sizes, pens, stamps, garlands, bubble blowers, candies… the whole shebang.

We put together the presentations, the schedule, the layout at the venue. There is so much more to plan than meets the eye for an event like this!

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In the end, it all paid off and the festival went just as planned (except for the heavy rain, of course, we did NOT plan for that).

To recap, the festival consisted of:

• Art exhibition / Pop-up stores: Alejandra Torres; Jua&Co; The Label M
• Start-up booths: NomadHer; Hey Travel Mate
• Talkshow with entrepreneurs - DISCUSSION: Diversity in the workplace: Monia (Jua&Co), Negar Yaghoobi (Colorful Zone), April Wiser (Foto Femme United), Alejandra Torres (Alejandraw), Sarah (Hey Travel Mate).
• Talkshow with travelers - DISCUSSION: Why should every woman travel solo at least once in her life: Julianna, Jeanine, Eva.
• Drinks, music, and dancing until 10pm

Voilà! 🥳

If you were there, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you weren't there, we hope to see you next year!

Take care NomadHers, keep traveling and dreaming 🌸

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P.S. 👋

Not so fast, the FGF 2021 Edition doesn’t end here!

We still have a few online events in store for you:

• Sexual Harassment Series: a set of live conversations with different organisations that fight for public safety for women. The events are posted on our App, and we will tell you more on our IG soon, so stay tuned ;)
• Airbnb contest: Would you like to get free accommodation with the NomadHer team in the French countryside? Yes, you read that right. During September, the NomadHer team will be based in a cute-as-hell Airbnb property in the Burgundy countryside, and we want to invite some of you to join us! We can teach you some tools to work remotely, and, of course, organize short weekend trips to nearby areas. Are you in? More info coming soon in all our media channels.

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