Go Girls @ Go Fly Club in Boituva in Brazil

Skydiving has a lot of both written and unwritten rules, plus plenty of mysterious territory to navigate when you are developing your skills. Modern training and progression structures present general targets to aim for, but wherever you jump there can be a lot of stuff you just need to figure out somehow. Boituva in Brazil contains, when taken all together, a gigantic skydiving operation with many moving parts, and over time as a professional, CYPRES athlete Martina Bombicini, along with Marcela Prado and Rogério Menezes of Go Fly Paraquedismo (tandem part), Go Fly Club (school and cool progression area part) saw an opportunity to create and develop a space that arguably all dropzones would benefit from… somewhere for female skydivers of all levels to support each other. Here she is to tell us about it…

Movement

Go Girls is a step forward towards a place in skydiving that we had been naturally working towards as a part of our position in the sport. Sure, it started as a way to have coaching events and offer progression for female skydivers, but the idea was to create a place to gather our energy together and help each other to grow with the right kind of support. We have regular events and coaching, but Go Girls is not a team. We like using ‘movement’. I think this is the right word. 

Real Space

We wanted to make a little area here that could be used together by female skydivers. Yes there is an element of the Go Girls office being a like a privacy and safety space, but really it is about connections. Skydiving has many boys and not so many girls, and we thought it would be great to build somewhere female skydivers could occupy. There was this little room not being used at the Go Fly club area, and while we had to sell the idea at first, it started to work really well. Rogério (Martina’s husband and owner of Go Fly) has been very supportive and has done so much help us include Go Girls into the dropzone. We changed some things around and made it into a nice place to be – there is space to put things, to teach and debrief, plus air-conditioning and coffee. We began with just a few of us, four or five girls, but things grew super organically and now we have maybe fifty regulars who come here to learn and fly. 

Resources

Over our time in skydiving and working at both the tunnel and the dropzone, we found that more and more people – girls especially – would come to us for answers, which is a big part of creating Go Girls. The dropzone environment, and the sport in general, can be challenging for everyone when you are new – or even when you are not new. Finding your way in skydiving can be as much about the connection points between things as it is about events and jumps themselves.

So yes we offer regular events and coaching in the sky and the tunnel, but we are here for anything and everything someone might need. Girls hear about how to find us now, but I also make a point introducing myself to students starting AFF or when new jumpers arrive here at Boituva – so right away they have my contact details and go into our group chat. We believe that making these connections is very important, and when you have them in place you start to see in advance more things becoming possible.

(As if to make this extra clear, as we are talking a Swedish visitor Wintering in Boituva enters the room, asks for help with some banking admin for her accommodation, promptly has her problem solved and leaves again). 

Next

Go Girls is based here in Boituva, and along with regular coaching and tunnel days, we hold an event every two months, where we aim for a good balance of structure and organisation – but also keep it really fun. This year we will also start a new event called Vertical Girls. We wanted to offer something new with a big goal to aim for, so this month is the first one and we will begin training to set a new female vertical record – first here in Brazil and then beyond. Boituva is our home, but we would love for Go Girls to travel some more and share what we do. We are talking with friends about an event in Europe this Summer – possibly in Sweden.

Progress

Even after just our first couple of days at Boituva, it is clear that this approach makes a useful and positive contribution. The small, thoughtful physical space is not exclusive, but exists as a sort of subtle priority area for girls to gravitate to, and inhabit together, in amongst a traditionally very dude-heavy environment. No other communal area has been compromised to have this, so there isn’t any missing out. It works, and is good, and you can feel it in the atmosphere.