GirlCrew’s Carrigaline Connection Irish social group GirlCrew, co-founded by Carrigaline woman Pamela Newenham, is to be honoured by Facebook. As part of the celebrations around Facebook’s upcoming twelfth birthday on February 4th, the social network contacted groups and individuals around the world it wished to highlight. GirlCrew, which is an online and offline community for women to make new friends, grow their social circle and expand their professional network, was selected as one of the worldwide success stories to be highlighted. Facebook is filming GirlCrew events for a video to mark the social network’s 12th birthday. Facebook is then flying over Ms. Newenham along with her GirlCrew co-founders Elva Carri and Aine Mulloy to its headquarters in Palo Alto, California for a private event on February 1st. Ms Newenham said the group was thrilled to have been selected by Facebook as on its success stories. “GirlCrew operates on the Facebook platform. All our groups worldwide are on the social network, and that’s how women join the community. If it weren’t for Facebook I don’t think we would have got so big, so quickly. We added 19,000 new members last year alone.” GirlCrew has more than 22,000 members across 44 cities worldwide including Cork, Dublin, Melbourne, Chicago, Aberdeen, San Francisco, London and Toronto. Over 20 events take place every week in GirlCrew groups worldwide, across Ireland, the UK, mainland Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and Singapore. These include lunches, dinners, nights out, cinema trips, book clubs and surfing weekends. GirlCrew Cork has more than 1,300 members. “It is really easy to make friends at school and college, but as you get older, it becomes harder,” Ms Newenham said. “People settle down, or move abroad. A lot of people are very busy at work. You might want to go to a concert, but none of your friends can go or are interested. This is where GirlCrew comes in,” she added. A GirlCrew Trips & Travel group has also evolved, consisting of members from throughout the UK, Ireland, Belgium and Germany, who have holidayed together. Members, some who never met before, have all been on holidays to Morocco, Ibiza, the Czech Republic and Spain together, among other countries. While the co-founders of GirlCrew have ambitions to turn the idea into a profitable company, for now they are expanding the network worldwide and developing an app. The trio have also started running professional networking events called GirlCrew Pro to help women in their careers. Microsoft Ireland HR director Clodagh Logue, Irish Internet Association chief executive Joan Mulvihill, Google EMEA head of sales Fionnuala Meehan, Xpose magazine editor Deanna O’Connor and Diageo head of corporate communications Hazel Chu are among the people who have spoken at various GirlCrew Pro events. People can join GirlCrew by going to www.girlcrew.rocks or looking up the group on Facebook. Women can join GirlCrew Cork at www.facebook.com/groups/girl.crew.cork