Malmoe officially became an InterNations Community on March 23, 2011. Our three Malmoe Ambassadors let us in on how it all began.
Former colleagues Adriana Killinger and Caroline Yazi, both living and working in southern Sweden, shared an interest in intercultural exchange and networking, so when they were invited to join InterNations at the beginning of 2010 they quickly started attending the get-togethers in Copenhagen, Denmark, which was the community closest to Malmoe.
The Copenhagen Expat Community welcomed both Adriana and Caroline with open arms and they had a wonderful time at the Copenhagen get-togethers every time they could participate. However, distance made it hard to travel to Denmark as often as they wanted to and the two women wished for a closer community. Thus, the idea of an InterNations Malmoe Community began to take shape.
During the same time, Russian native Dina Sultanova, who initially joined InterNations during her stay in Mumbai, India, had recently moved to Malmoe, Sweden and started up a Malmoe group forum on the InterNations website to see if she could get in touch with other global minds in her new home town.
The women didn’t know one another, but Adriana and Caroline decided to contact Dina to discuss future collaboration once they had discovered her online group forum. The meeting was successful and the three women agreed to join forces to see if they could make the Malmoe group more active.
With lots of information, help and inspiration from the Copenhagen Community Ambassador Tobias Fuchs, whom Adriana, Caroline and Dina had met at the Copenhagen get-togethers, the three women decided that they were ready to arrange the very first Malmoe get-together on February 17, 2011. The start-up event was a huge success according to the participants, and Dina, Adriana and Caroline knew that in order for the group to grow they needed to take it to the next level, which was becoming a community.
The dream came true shortly after the second Malmoe get-together in March when InterNations’ International Relations Manager Eva Aschenbrenner and co-founder/managing director Malte Zeeck announced that the Malmoe group had shown great promise and would soon become an official InterNations Community. What used to be a local group of about 70 people became a community with over 300 members overnight thanks to the InterNations team in Munich, Germany, responsible for the community set-up on the InterNations website.
The Malmoe Community is now ready to flourish and the first official InterNations Malmoe get-together as a community will take place on April 14, 2011 at Hotel Scandic Kramer. So, if you are already a member of the InterNations Malmoe Community or in the neighborhood don’t forget to stop by and meet up with some amazing people!
Photos courtesy of the Malmoe Ambassadors and Wikimedia Commons.
