For Press Saturday, January 11, 2014

The International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club has redesigned and rebuilt their website and forums from scratch. Now, geek girls (and guys) worldwide can join in the fun on their site by registering for a geeky pen pal, conversing on the forum and now battle their way up the leaderboard with our brand new achievements! The site has also been optimized for mobile viewing so you can keep up with IGGPPC from your phone or tablet!

“We introduced the Achievements functionality to encourage more friendly competition among our members” explains Emily Farquharson, one of the co-founders of the club and leader of House GlaDOS. Achievements include ones for holidays, active posters/bloggers, inter-house competitions, fandom achievements like “Total Whovian” and there are even secret ones hidden around the site! This new and improved expansion to the IGGPPC Universe also includes the addition of four new staff members: Arielle Fragassi, Kimberlee Lockhart, Valerie Minnich and Summer Sparacin, who have been lovingly dubbed their Ninjas. Their initial contribution will be forum moderation and helping with organizing projects on the website. IGGPPC community members are sorted into Houses, based on age, which are used to organize pan pal match ups. The houses are named for four famous females in geek culture: Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), Harley Quinn (Batman), GlaDOS (Portal) and Princess Leia (Star Wars).

In addition to pen pals and discussion forums, the International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club offers members a chance to join in fun online and offline activities like photography contests, a book club, meet ups for local chapters, candy and gift swaps and even street team swag to spread the word. “We first established the Club in March of 2013 we had no idea it would grow and evolve into the creative, supportive, intelligent and wise-cracking community we have today.” said Leslie Stewart, who is the club’s other co-founder and heads up House Granger. “So many of our members have been there from the very beginning, so it will be incredible to be able to track and chronicle our journey together through our new site.”

As to the rapid success the Club has had over the past year, they’re not shy with numbers. “We have 2,500 Facebook likes, we’ve paired nearly 10,000 girls and guys with a pen pal from around the globe, and hand sorted through nearly 50,000 geek loves, that help us to determine the compatibility of pen pals.” Jen Giammarco, staff member and leader of House Organa, divulges. “It’s overwhelming and amazing, the response we’ve had.”

The club has also been helped along thanks to some rad celebrities on Twitter who have helped us spread the word as well. “We’ve been retweeted by musician Amanda Palmer, super geek celeb Veronica Belmont, geek girl collective Team Unicorn, and even Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls,” says Emma Somerville, who is in charge of House Quinn. “And we really hope more geeks get wind of our cool little club we’ve started and help us to spread the word.”

The new Geek Girl Pen Pals website, achievements and all, is available to check out at www.geekgirlpenpals.com. Girls and guys, aged 13 and up, are welcome to join the site, earn achievements, and sign up to be paired with a pen pal on the 15th of every month.

You can follow IGGPPC on Twitter @IGGPPCHQ (or search for #IGGPPC) or find them on Facebook.

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