Long before coworking spaces, startup accelerators and digital rights organizations became familiar parts of Beirut’s landscape, a small nonprofit on the sixth floor of a building overlooking the city’s port was quietly experimenting with all three. That organization was Root Space, usually written as one word, RootSpace. It was a Lebanese non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Beirut, and its central purpose was to support sustainable social and economic development by giving people, ideas and civil society groups the space, tools and networks they needed to grow.
Root Space never became a household name outside Lebanon’s tech and civil society circles, and it existed in its original nonprofit form for only a few years. Yet its influence is visible in institutions that still matter today. One of the Arab region’s best-known digital rights organizations began as a program inside it. One of Beirut’s earliest well-known coworking and startup communities grew directly out of its experience. And some of the first open, participatory technology gatherings in Lebanon were initiated by its team.
This article tells the full story of Root Space: why it was created, who was behind it, what it actually did, how it operated, why it eventually changed form, and what lessons its experience still offers to NGOs, social entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders in Lebanon and beyond.
Root Space at a Glance
Before going into detail, here is a concise overview of the organization:
- Name: Root Space (also written RootSpace)
- Type: Lebanese non-governmental, non-profit organization
- Headquarters: Saifi district, Beirut, Lebanon
- Founded: 2007
- Key founder: David Munir Nabti, together with a group of friends and collaborators
- Mission: Supporting innovation, incubation and sustainable social and economic development, with a strong focus on civil society and social entrepreneurship
- Core activities: Shared office and coworking space, civil-society technology and social media training, public discussion series, community events, entrepreneurship forums
- Notable offshoots and successors: The Social Media Exchange program (later the independent NGO SMEX) and the coworking and innovation space AltCity
The Lebanese Context That Made Root Space Necessary
To understand why Root Space mattered, it helps to remember what Lebanon looked like in the second half of the 2000s.
The country was still living with the long shadow of the 1975–1990 civil war, the reconstruction of central Beirut, and repeated political crises. In 2005, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri triggered mass mobilization and political upheaval. In the summer of 2006, the war between Israel and Hezbollah caused widespread destruction and displacement. In 2007 and 2008, Lebanon experienced prolonged political deadlock, a presidential vacancy and armed clashes in Beirut in May 2008. Through all of this, Lebanon’s economy struggled to produce enough quality jobs for its young, highly educated population, and emigration of talent remained a constant concern.
At the same time, Lebanon had one of the most active civil societies in the Arab world. Thousands of associations worked on everything from human rights and women’s rights to environmental protection, refugee support and local development. Many of these groups, however, were small, underfunded and operating with limited infrastructure. They often lacked affordable offices, reliable internet, training in new technologies and opportunities to meet peers outside their own networks.
The startup and social enterprise scene was also in its infancy. There were very few dedicated spaces where an individual with an idea, a freelancer, a small new organization or a project-based team could find a professional working environment without signing an expensive commercial lease. The concept of coworking itself was still new globally, having only begun spreading internationally in the mid-2000s.
Root Space was born in exactly this gap: between a vibrant but under-resourced civil society, a young and creative population looking for opportunities, and a city whose physical and institutional infrastructure made it hard for small initiatives to get started.
Founding and the People Behind Root Space
The driving figure behind Root Space was David Munir Nabti. His personal background explains much of the organization’s character, which blended technology, media, policy and social change.
Nabti graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in political science and international economics, and his first job afterward was at Stanford’s graduate journalism program, while he also worked as a policy compliance analyst at Google. He later moved to the Middle East. He worked in Syria for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization while also completing another bachelor’s degree, in Middle East Studies, at the American University of Beirut. His academic interest in countries undergoing political and economic transition, combined with family ties to Lebanon, drew him to Beirut, which he saw as an ideal place to combine his interests in tech, media, art, entrepreneurship and policy.
The underlying idea, as Nabti later described it, was to carry the creative energy of Silicon Valley, with its media, technology and creativity, into post-conflict and developing societies that needed it most. Shared spaces were not the original plan; they emerged as the answer once the team analyzed what people starting out in Lebanon actually lacked, both in terms of “hard” needs such as physical space and infrastructure and “soft” needs such as networks, knowledge and support.
In 2007, together with a group of friends, Nabti took a space in the Saifi district near the port of Beirut and created what they described as a “community space for innovation, incubation and sustainable social and economic development.” That space was named RootSpace, and Nabti has said it was possibly the first space of its kind in Lebanon.
The name itself captured the philosophy. “Roots” suggested grounding in local communities and long-term, organic growth rather than quick, imported solutions. “Space” referred both to the physical place where people could work together and to the broader room for experimentation and collaboration that Lebanese civil society needed.
Mission and Guiding Principles
Root Space’s mission can be summarized in three interconnected goals.
Supporting civil society. Root Space positioned itself as an ally of Lebanon’s NGOs, activists and community initiatives. The organization stated plainly that it was committed to supporting civil society and social entrepreneurship in Lebanon. In practice, this meant making professional infrastructure affordable and helping organizations adopt tools that could improve their internal management, communications and outreach.
Fostering social entrepreneurship and innovation. Root Space believed that new ventures, whether nonprofit projects or socially minded businesses, could address problems that neither the state nor traditional charities were solving. It sought to incubate such initiatives by offering them a home, connections and visibility.
Contributing to sustainable social and economic development. Rather than delivering one-off aid, Root Space aimed to strengthen the long-term capacity of people and organizations. Training, networking and shared infrastructure were all ways of building lasting assets in the Lebanese ecosystem.
Several principles ran through everything the organization did: openness and knowledge sharing, participation and peer learning, affordability, and a belief that technology and media could be harnessed for social change rather than being luxuries reserved for large companies.
Where Root Space Was Located
Root Space’s physical home was an important part of its identity. The organization was located in the Saifi area of Beirut on Charles Helou Street, above the bus station and the port, in the Valli & Valli Building on the sixth floor, roughly 50 meters from Bayt Al-Kataib in the direction away from downtown.
Root Space itself highlighted that its offices overlooked downtown Beirut, the BIEL exhibition center and the port area, and that it was close to the headquarters of the European Union delegation. The location was symbolically rich. Saifi sits at the edge of Beirut’s reconstructed central district and near the former Green Line that divided the city during the civil war. Setting up a space dedicated to collaboration, innovation and civil society at this junction reflected the organization’s broader ambition of building bridges across communities.
The location also had practical drawbacks, which would later shape the organization’s evolution. As Nabti later reflected, Saifi did not generate much walk-in traffic, which limited how easily new people could discover the space spontaneously.
What Root Space Did: Programs and Activities
Root Space combined several functions that, at the time, were rarely found under one roof in Lebanon: a shared workspace, a training center, a public discussion forum and an organizer of larger community events.
A Shared Community Office for Small Organizations and Individuals
At its core, Root Space operated as a shared community office. Individuals and small groups, including project-based teams and small or newly developing companies and organizations, could rent either desks or a private office, with the amenities of a real office such as internet, telephone, fax, printer and a kitchen.
This may sound ordinary today, but in Beirut in the late 2000s it was a genuinely new offer. Commercial office space was expensive, leases were long and inflexible, and reliable connectivity and utilities could not be taken for granted. For a two-person NGO, an independent journalist, a consultant or a team running a grant-funded project, Root Space provided a professional address and working environment at a fraction of the cost of a standalone office.
Root Space described its prices as reasonable and somewhat flexible, and openly presented the space as a developing project whose aim was to help other people and groups work better, faster and more easily. This candid, iterative attitude was characteristic of the organization. It treated its own operations as an experiment in what kind of support Lebanese innovators needed.
The shared office was not just about cost savings. By bringing activists, techies, journalists, researchers and early-stage entrepreneurs into the same room, Root Space created the kind of serendipitous encounters that ecosystem builders now consider essential. People working on very different causes could share skills, discover partners and build informal networks.
Training Civil Society in Social and Participatory Media
One of Root Space’s most significant contributions was its early investment in helping Lebanese civil society use the internet strategically. In 2008, when platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs were still new tools for most organizations in the region, Root Space launched a structured program to close that gap.
In May 2008, RootSpace launched a six-month program to introduce members of Lebanon’s civil society, both organizations and individuals, to social and participatory media on the internet. The program had two goals: helping organizations and projects improve and streamline their internal organization, management and communications, and helping them achieve their social objectives.
The program was carefully structured. The first phase consisted of an introductory seminar on the social web, including social bookmarking, RSS and blogging, and how these could be used in an NGO environment. The second phase offered advanced, hands-on workshops in the various technologies, along with mentorship for selected NGO participants. Importantly, Root Space did not confine its work to the capital. Introductory seminars were held in various regions of Lebanon, while most hands-on workshops took place in Beirut.
The intensive workshops began that summer. The Social Media Exchange launched its series of intensive workshops at RootSpace in August 2008, starting with a course called Beginning Blogging.
This regional reach was significant. Civil society in Lebanon has often been concentrated in Beirut, while organizations in the north, south and Bekaa frequently have less access to training and resources. By taking introductory seminars outside the capital, Root Space tried to make digital capacity-building more equitable.
The Social Media Exchange Program
The social media training effort grew into a distinct program with its own name: the Social Media Exchange. Jessica Dheere served as director of the Social Media Exchange program at RootSpace.
Dheere was an American journalist who had come to Lebanon on a reporting assignment and stayed. According to IJNet, she recognized years before the Arab uprisings that social media should be a priority for journalists, and after settling in Beirut she established the training organization Social Media Exchange with her husband, Mohamad Najem.
The Social Media Exchange would go on to become one of Root Space’s most enduring legacies, as described later in this article.
“Social Hour”: Public Conversations on Media, Technology and Change
In addition to formal training, Root Space hosted an informal but substantive discussion series that brought together practitioners, activists and the curious public. The series, titled Social Media for Social Change, was co-hosted by RootSpace and the Social Media Exchange. Its first episode, held at RootSpace in Saifi on a Wednesday in July, focused on blogging, citizen journalism and social networks, asking what alternative media existed in Lebanon and what benefits it could offer. Guiding questions included whether real media choice existed in Lebanon, whether that mattered, whether alternative media had an impact, and what role Lebanon could play in the region.
A later edition tackled civil society’s use of technology directly. The topic was how Lebanese civil society was currently using the web and technology to organize, coordinate, conduct outreach and drive change, and how it could use them more effectively. The lineup shows how well connected Root Space was within Lebanon’s civil society. Panelists included Bassem Chit, technical advisor at Lebanon Support; Roula Masri, coordinator of the Women’s Right to Nationality Campaign at CRTDA; Imad Atalla, an entrepreneur who had conducted a 2007 survey on technology use by Lebanese civil society organizations; and Youssef Fawaz, executive director of Al Majmoua, the Lebanese Association for Development.
The format was deliberately relaxed. Social hour began in the early evening, followed by an hour-long discussion, after which the social part continued. This mix of serious debate and informal networking was a hallmark of Root Space’s approach: learning and relationship-building happened together.
BarCamp Lebanon: Bringing the “Unconference” to Beirut
Root Space also helped bring open, participatory tech gatherings to Lebanon. BarCamps are open workshop-style events whose content is supplied by the participants themselves, rather than by a fixed lineup of invited speakers. In early 2009, Root Space played a central role in organizing one of Lebanon’s first such events.
The OpenSesame BarCamp in Lebanon was initiated by David Munir Nabti of RootSpace and Sami Tueni of Naharnet, with co-organizers including the Youth Shadow Government and Creative Commons, and was hosted at the American University of Beirut’s Olayan School of Business. The kickoff planning session took place at RootSpace in late January, and the event itself was held on Saturday, February 28, from 10am to 5pm at AUB’s Nicely Hall.
Members of Lebanon’s emerging open-technology community saw the event as a meaningful opportunity. A contributor to the OpenStreetMap Lebanon mailing list described it as a gathering about openness at AUB that many tech-savvy people, including bloggers, Twitter users and company representatives, would attend, and suggested it as a chance to promote OpenStreetMap and recruit new mappers.
The BarCamp is a good example of Root Space’s ecosystem-building role. It did not try to own the event; instead, it convened partners from media, academia, youth movements, open-licensing advocates and industry, and then let participants shape the agenda.
The 4SITE Forum: Investing in Sustainability, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship
Later in 2009, Root Space stepped up to a larger, regional-scale event. The 4SITE Forum, short for Investing in Sustainability, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship, brought together more than 200 investors, innovators and entrepreneurs from Lebanon and the wider Middle East, with the goal of promoting innovation and entrepreneurship for sustainable economic development and social impact.
The forum was organized by RootSpace and Baraka Group in conjunction with Global Entrepreneurship Week, an annual November event held in more than 80 countries, and ran over two days with participatory panels, keynotes, workshops, demonstrations and networking. It took place at the Bayt El-Tabib Conference Center in Beirut on November 17–18, 2009, and was intended as the first in a series of 4SITE Forums across the region. Alongside the fixed program, some slots were reserved for BarCamp-style presentations and demos by participants.
The 4SITE Forum shows how Root Space’s thinking had matured. It linked sustainability, technology and entrepreneurship explicitly, and it brought investors into the conversation. In doing so, it anticipated the direction Lebanon’s ecosystem would take over the following years, as startup accelerators, investment programs and international tech conferences began to appear in Beirut.
How the Nonprofit Model Worked and Where It Struggled
Root Space operated as a non-profit. Its revenue came from a mix of desk and office rentals, program activities and partnerships, while its purpose was public benefit rather than profit for owners.
This model had clear strengths. It allowed Root Space to keep prices accessible for NGOs and individuals with limited budgets. It gave the organization credibility with civil society groups, which might have been wary of a purely commercial landlord. It also made it natural to run training programs and public events that did not generate direct income but strengthened the wider community.
The model also had limitations, and the Root Space team was candid about them. Running physical infrastructure in Lebanon is expensive and difficult: electricity cuts, generator costs, unreliable internet and administrative complexity all add overhead. A small nonprofit space could not easily spread those costs over a large membership. Nabti later summarized one of the central lessons as the importance of economies of scale, particularly in Lebanon, where simply dealing with basic infrastructure is already hard.
Location played a role too. A sixth-floor office on a busy highway overlooking the port offered great views but little foot traffic. For a community space that depended on new people discovering it, this was a structural disadvantage.
From Root Space to AltCity: Evolution, Not Disappearance
Root Space did not so much close as evolve. Over roughly three years, the team became fully immersed in Lebanon’s entrepreneurial scene, and RootSpace reached a point where it needed to expand and move. The founders also wanted to move away from a non-profit business model toward one that would make scaling easier. The result was AltCity.
AltCity opened in 2011 in Hamra, the lively West Beirut district near the American University of Beirut, a location with far more walk-in traffic and a dense student and creative population. Its core team consisted of Nabti together with co-founders Samer Azar and Dima Saber. AltCity kept much of Root Space’s DNA, including coworking, events and support for entrepreneurs, while adding a café that served both as a revenue stream and as a place for informal discussion.
By mid-2014, Nabti estimated that around 10,000 people had passed through AltCity’s doors and that it had hosted some 800 events. The team was also working with Lebanon’s Central Bank on a startup boot camp program aimed at supporting 100 startups over a year, up to early-stage financing.
Seen in this light, Root Space was the prototype. Its experiments with shared space, community programming and civil-society support provided the knowledge, networks and reputation on which the next stage was built.
The Legacy of Root Space
Because Root Space operated at a relatively small scale and for a limited period, its influence is easy to underestimate. In reality, its legacy runs through several important parts of Lebanon’s civil society and innovation landscape.
SMEX: From Training Program to Regional Digital Rights Leader
The most visible legacy is SMEX. What began as the Social Media Exchange program at Root Space became an independent organization. SMEX, formerly known as Social Media Exchange, is a Beirut-based organization focused on digital rights in the Arab world, led by executive director Mohamad Najem, and it was established in 2008.
Over time, the organization shifted from social media training to research and advocacy on internet freedom, privacy and online expression. Jessica Dheere later explained that the name was shortened from Social Media Exchange to SMEX partly to stop people asking the group to manage their social media accounts, something it never did. Today SMEX describes itself as championing digital rights across West Asia and North Africa, working to ensure people in the region can use the internet and other networked spaces safely, freely and without fear of censorship or surveillance. Dheere herself went on to a prominent international career; New America noted that she co-founded and formerly directed SMEX, which it described as the leading NGO in the Arab region working at the intersection of technology and human rights, before she became director of Ranking Digital Rights.
The trajectory from a training program in a small Saifi office to a leading regional digital rights organization is perhaps the clearest proof of Root Space’s incubating role.
Pioneering Coworking in Lebanon
Root Space was among the very first coworking-style spaces in Lebanon. Through AltCity and the many coworking spaces that later appeared across Beirut, the model it tested became a normal part of Lebanon’s entrepreneurial infrastructure. Every freelancer who today rents a hot desk in Beirut benefits, indirectly, from the early experiments of organizations like Root Space that proved the concept could work locally.
Early Ecosystem Building
Root Space was active at a formative moment for Lebanon’s startup and tech scene. Within a short time of its BarCamp and 4SITE Forum, Beirut saw the launch of other milestones. ArabNet 2010, billed as the first international conference for the Arab internet industry, was held in Beirut in March 2010 in collaboration with the Central Bank of Lebanon. The startup accelerator Seeqnce was founded in Beirut in 2010 and launched its space in Hamra in July 2011. Root Space was part of the early wave of initiatives that made such developments possible by building community, normalizing collaboration and connecting civil society, technology and entrepreneurship. It is also listed among Lebanese initiatives in Wikipedia’s list of Arab entrepreneurship initiatives, alongside organizations such as Bader Lebanon and AUB’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Bridging Civil Society and Technology
Perhaps Root Space’s most distinctive contribution was conceptual. In the late 2000s, the worlds of NGOs and technology startups in Lebanon rarely overlapped. Root Space deliberately brought them together, treating digital tools as instruments for social change and treating social impact as a legitimate goal for entrepreneurs. This intersection, now often called “civic tech” or “tech for good,” later became a recognized field across the region.
Lessons from Root Space for NGOs and Social Entrepreneurs
Root Space’s experience offers practical lessons that remain relevant for anyone building community spaces, nonprofits or social enterprises, particularly in fragile or crisis-affected environments.
Start with real needs, not a predetermined model. Root Space’s founders did not set out to build a coworking space. They arrived at shared space after analyzing what people starting projects in Lebanon actually lacked. Grounding programs in observed needs, rather than imported templates, makes them more likely to succeed.
Infrastructure is mission-critical in fragile contexts. In a country where electricity, internet and office space are unreliable or costly, simply providing a functioning workplace is a meaningful form of support. Organizations working in similar environments should not underestimate the value of “boring” infrastructure.
Scale matters for sustainability. Root Space’s own conclusion was that economies of scale are essential, especially when fixed costs are high. Small nonprofit spaces may need to plan from the outset for growth, partnerships or hybrid revenue models.
Location shapes community. A space that depends on new members and spontaneous encounters needs visibility and foot traffic. The move from Saifi to Hamra illustrates how physical location can determine whether a community grows organically.
Incubate and then let go. The Social Media Exchange started as an internal program and later became independent, outgrowing its parent. Successful incubation often means helping initiatives become autonomous rather than keeping them under the founding organization’s control.
Combine formal and informal learning. Root Space paired structured workshops with relaxed evening discussions and open-format events. Each format reached different people and served different purposes, from skill-building to relationship-building.
Be willing to change the model. Moving from a nonprofit structure to a more scalable model was not a betrayal of the mission but a way of pursuing it more effectively. Organizations should judge legal and financial structures by how well they serve the goal, not treat them as part of their identity.
Why Root Space Still Matters
Lebanon has gone through profound crises since Root Space’s founding years, including economic collapse, a banking crisis, the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion that damaged much of the very area where Root Space once had its office, and renewed conflict. In such conditions, the questions Root Space tried to answer remain pressing. How can young people with ideas find the resources to act on them? How can small civil society organizations work professionally on tight budgets? How can technology serve social change rather than deepen existing inequalities?
Root Space’s story shows that even a small organization, operating for a short time and with modest means, can have outsized impact if it focuses on building capacity, connecting people and letting new initiatives take root. Its offshoots and the communities it helped form continued long after its original nonprofit structure was gone.
Frequently Asked Questions About Root Space
What was Root Space?
Root Space (RootSpace) was a Lebanese non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Beirut. It operated a community space dedicated to innovation, incubation and sustainable social and economic development, with a particular focus on supporting civil society and social entrepreneurship.
When was Root Space founded?
Root Space was founded in 2007 by David Munir Nabti and a group of friends.
Where was Root Space located?
It was located in the Saifi district of Beirut, on Charles Helou Street in the Valli & Valli Building, on the sixth floor, overlooking the port, downtown Beirut and the BIEL exhibition center.
What services did Root Space offer?
It offered shared office space with desks and private offices, training for NGOs and individuals in social and participatory media, public discussion events, and larger community gatherings such as a BarCamp and the 4SITE Forum on sustainability, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship.
Was Root Space Lebanon’s first coworking space?
Its founder described it as possibly the first space of its kind in Lebanon, and it is widely regarded as one of the country’s earliest coworking-style community spaces.
What is the connection between Root Space and SMEX?
SMEX, now a Beirut-based digital rights organization working across the Arab region, began in 2008 as the Social Media Exchange, a program housed at Root Space and directed by Jessica Dheere. It later became an independent organization.
What happened to Root Space?
After about three years, Root Space needed to expand and move, and its founders wanted a model better suited to scaling than the nonprofit structure. The team went on to create AltCity, which opened in 2011 in the Hamra district of Beirut.
Who was behind AltCity?
AltCity’s core team consisted of David Munir Nabti, Samer Azar and Dima Saber.
Why is Root Space considered important?
It was one of the earliest organizations in Lebanon to combine shared workspace, civil-society capacity building and entrepreneurship support. It incubated the organization that became SMEX, helped organize early open technology gatherings, and laid groundwork for the later growth of Beirut’s coworking and startup ecosystem.
Sources and Further Reading
The history presented here draws on contemporaneous and retrospective documentation, including Wamda’s profile of David Munir Nabti and the founding of RootSpace and AltCity; announcements published by RootSpace on Daleel Madani, Lebanon’s civil society network; archived Social Media Exchange event posts on smex.org; the BarCamp wiki page for the OpenSesame BarCamp in Lebanon; Startup Arabia’s coverage of the 4SITE Forum; and published profiles of SMEX and its co-founder Jessica Dheere by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, IJNet and New America. Readers interested in the broader story of Lebanon’s civil society and entrepreneurship ecosystem will find these sources a useful starting point.
