When Olga Fler and Irina Baranova arrived in Dubai within days of each other in early 2022, they did not know each other. Within months they had co-founded Dubai Friends, a community of relocated professionals that grew from ten members to nearly eight hundred in under a year. All of them high-profile business owners and executives who had previously built careers in Russia, they shared a specific need: the kind of organic, trusted social environment that takes years to build anywhere, and which relocation erases overnight.
Olga: We badly needed the family-like support we had once had in Moscow. People sharing news, meals, and genuine concern. Ten of us started a chat.
It grew. Now we have eighteen groups across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Monaco, and London. Irina: The integration shock is real.
Most of our members have to change not only their location but their professional function and identity. Triple stress. Under those conditions, falling in love, as some people advise, is a tall order.
Simply getting out of bed and being present is enough for the first six months. The Harvard Business School research on happiness makes the case clearly: financial success does not determine wellbeing. Relationships do.
Shared experiences with people you trust are what generate the memories that sustain a life. That is what Dubai Friends tries to enable. Olga: Dubai offers everything your body and soul might desire.
Cultural events so numerous you cannot attend them all. Art, architecture, nature, food, sport. What it does not offer automatically is belonging.
That has to be built, one introduction at a time. Irina: Not one of our 800 members has unsubscribed. When we ask them what membership gives them, the answers are always the same: not feeling alone, getting support, having access to information and contacts. We are on the right track, in the right place.