Making friends in adulthood can be difficult, but there’s a Calgary club helping build connections through events and hangouts. The qualifications to join? Step one: be a girl (or girl-adjacent). Step two: like to do things.
In the fall of 2023, university student Charis LaRue scoured through the student club options available at the University of Calgary, but ultimately, couldn’t find anything that interested her. What she really wanted was to “make friends and do things,” so naturally, she found another way.
LaRue texted her friend, Jayda Manuel, “I have an idea for a club. It’s called Girls Who Like to Do Things.” Manuel responded, “Well, I’m a girl,” and just like that, the ball was rolling.
Let’s go, girls
It wouldn’t be until a year later that the club officially got off the ground, but when it did, it became bigger than LaRue and Manuel initially planned. While they intended to be a university club, the founders decided to widen their scope to include more people.
“At the end of the day, we’re wanting to provide women and gender-diverse people an opportunity to create connections and build community, and offer that to more than just students,” explains LaRue.
As such, Girls Who Like to Do Things have hosted women in their late teens, moms, and everyone in between. Their first event — a flower arranging hangout in the park — saw a total of eight people. But when Manuel made a TikTok showcasing the event, it went semi-viral, and the popularity of the club exploded.
The next event had literally ten times the number of participants. 80 people showed up to make charm bracelets in September 2024, just a month after the debut event, and there were at least that many people on a waitlist. A Galentine’s Day Line Dancing event last February saw an attendance of over 300.
“We were not expecting that,” admits Manuel. “ We started with eight and now we’re planning large-scale events for huge groups of people, which is also crazy because we’re 20. And event planning is so much more difficult than people who have never done it give it credit for.”
Intention and impact
But for LaRue, Manuel, and the other executives on the Girls Who Like to Do Things team, the results make the hard work more than worth it. Following the line dancing event, several participants told LaRue and Manuel how special it was to feel so safe in a space where there was drinking and dancing. Many of the women have taken friendships made at these events into their personal lives.
“At one event, I had a girl come up to me and she said, ‘Look around a second at the community you guys have brought together. Look at these girls mingling, feeling safe, feeling empowered, and trying new things.’ And that was so amazing to hear because sometimes we get caught up in the little things that go wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is what we’re doing it, and how we’re doing it,” says Manuel.
Girls Who Like to Do Things hasn’t received any funding or sponsorship, and their goal has never been to make money. Each event charges the minimum fare possible for the club to afford rentals, supplies, and other related costs. LaRue explains that she never wants cost to be a prohibitive factor for people to attend, and that the team is committed to making club events feel as safe as possible.
“We don’t want to fall into the trap of white liberal feminism,” she says, regarding the club’s public support of transgender rights and other topics that some might deem “political.” Because for many Calgarians, it’s not just politics — it’s personal, and can be a barrier to entry.
“The world is so much bigger than us, and if we’re going to be this feminist group in Calgary, we don’t want our feminism to stop at the Canadian borders when there’s so much going on in the world that it’s important to be cognizant about. That’s our stance, and if that’s a group of people someone doesn’t want to be around, we aren’t the group for them.”
Looking ahead
Given that students make up the bulk of their participants, LaRue and Manuel hope that the club can give back to their community through a scholarship in the future. But as LaRue explains, that’s just a short-term goal.
“We have no long-term monetary goals at the moment, because we’re really just focused on making a community in Calgary. That’s where our hearts are, so we’re going to continue what we’re doing and see where it takes us.”
Girls Who Like to Do Things is hosting Speed Dating for Sapphics and Speed Friending on June 13, and a Camp Craft Carabiner Workshop on June 21. Follow them on Instagram to keep up with their happenings — and maybe even make a new friend in the process.
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