GEMSI aims to build inclusive communities focused on service and taking initiative from Baghdad to Detroit and beyond.

GEMSI believes in the power of the Maker movement and in particular the empowering concept of Hacker Spaces. These spaces are community workshops that are democratizing innovation throughout the world. By providing their members with tools, collaborators, and access to a global pool of knowledge, these spaces are fostering technical skills and social experience that will help build a brighter, more awesome, future.

Hacker Spaces / Maker Spaces have recently experienced a dramatic growth throughout the world, going from a set of 50 which identified themselves on hackerspaces.org in 2008 to over 700 today. Sadly the developing world has not seen the same growth. GEMSI strives to address this issue by working throughout the world and especially in the Middle East and North Africa to foster a culture of innovation, creativity, problem solving, sharing and making.