Wander Woman: Creating opportunities for female travellers
Wander Woman (WW) is a social platform designed for the female travelers of Bangladesh. The community of travellers help each other to find important information and travel partners. They also arrange group tours. Sabira Mehrin formed this group when she began travelling alone and did not have any forum for the information she needed. "I also did not come across any prominent female travellers to follow and felt the need to build a strong community of female travellers to inspire other women," she shared.
WW began on September 2017 with a day-trip to base camp for 100 women. They chose the location keeping the demands for outdoor activities in mind. All the tickets were sold out in a day. The group currently has 10,000 members, most of whom are travelling actively. Over 500 women have travelled through Wander Woman so far.They have close to 20,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram. WW is currently moderated bySuzana Kamal. They have a team of seven volunteers for running the operations and promotions.
Within the first year of their establishment, they went to Bhutan with 18 girls. Then, they sent a group of 21 girls to The LastResort in Nepal for an adventure-filled trip.
"I wouldn't have known so many female travellers without WW. Their travel stories inspire people so much that they have become role models today," Sabira added. According to her, the biggest strength of WW is that they are realistic in terms of content.
As a solo traveller, Sabira completed her first international trip in 2015 after visiting Nairobi to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, hosted by Barack Obama. "The event was well organised, but I had lost money from my luggage that I kept at the hotel. I was fully broke," she shared.The incident taught Sabira to deal with unexpected problems using creative solutions.
Her future plans with WW include launching a website and including more suggestions and information for the members.
The group recently launched their empowerment wing called WW Academy to connect women with certified instructors for self-defence classes, which start from October in four locations across Dhaka. They are: Dhanmondi, Uttara, Gulshan and Siddheswari. "The sexual harassment we faced during domestic trips led to the formation of this wing," Sabira explained. She furtheraims to incorporate courses on photography, blogging and driving under WW Academy to equip female travellers with the right tools and training.
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