Global Innovation Gathering (GIG)
is a vibrant, diverse community of innovation hubs, makerspaces, hackerspaces and other grassroots innovation communities alongside individual innovators, makers, technologists and changemakers.

GIG is pursuing a new vision for global cooperation based on equality, openness and sharing with solid roots in the global south. We aim to enable more diversity in technology production and global innovation processes and support open and sustainable solutions developed by grassroots innovators.

GIG provides a platform for meaningful connections and exchange by fostering knowledge exchange and collaboration between its members, positively impacting the policies and frameworks for grassroots innovation.

We support research in innovation and development, digital rights and technology ecosystem questions carried out by local experts and international teams.

Open innovation for sustainability

Climate change demands innovative solutions, especially in the Global South where infrastructural support is often limited.

Open innovation offers an inclusive, bottom-up approach that empowers communities to tackle unique environmental challenges using available resources.

GIG supports its members on innovative sustainability projects like community-driven solution databases, eco-focused makerspaces, and climate-resilient hardware prototypes.

Global Gatherings

As a global community, GIG knows the power of convening like-minded innovators worldwide to work on digital innovation and digital rights-based policy topics. As Wau Holland, the founder of the Chaos Computer Club, once said about their annual congress, “Some digital things are best done in person”.

Open innovation for education

Many schools in the Global South lack adequate infrastructure for learning.

To bridge this gap, grassroots education initiatives play a vital role, empowering local communities to tackle changing educational needs in fair and inclusive ways.

GIG supports its members on open innovation projects for education. These projects include robotics, STEM learning, and hands-on activities in community workshops.

Citizen Social Science

Citizen Social Science combines equal collaboration between citizen groups (co-researchers) that share a social concern and academic researchers. Such an approach enables robust research methods to address pressing social issues embedded in their social contexts from the bottom up. In GIG, we aim to co-create socially rich knowledge.