Message from the Chairman

One of GEMS four core values is ‘Global Citizenship’ which emphasizes the importance of ‘giving’ to both the local and global community. The GEMS community has, throughout GEMS’ 50 year history been committed to ‘giving’ for many years and our students, staff and parents have been involved in a wide variety of community based charity initiatives.

GEMS Education celebrated its Golden Jubilee - 50 years in education in January 2010. It was at that point that we realized that our charitable work needed to be more structured and strategic. We felt that it was only fitting at the end of those celebrations to reinforce our commitment to improving the quality and access to education worldwide for those less fortunate.

In December of that year we made that commitment. We launched the Varkey GEMS Foundation, a not for profit charitable organization in the presence of former US President, Bill Clinton. Our goal, to impact one hundred children for every child enrolled at a GEMS school with the aim of impacting the lives of 10 million underprivileged children globally.

I believe that education is the most important issue in the world today. In order to confront all the prejudices, intolerances, conflicts and unprecedented environmental challenges, we need to improve education worldwide.

The fact that there are 70 million school age children worldwide who have never attended school is intolerable.

Since the launch, the Foundation is working in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, UNESCO, Dubai Cares and Pratham, a large primary education focused charity in India. We are also focusing on; scholarships for underprivileged children, teacher training and professional development and mentoring for school leaders.

We also realized that if we could harness the collective energy and enthusiasm for ‘giving’ from the GEMS community which consists of 100,000 students from 151 nationalities, 9,500 staff and hundreds of thousands of parents we could also make a considerable impact!

Education is the biggest gift that a family can receive because it provides them with an opportunity to be lifted out of hardship and poverty.

Sincerely,

Sunny Varkey
Founder and Chairman
GEMS Education