Our history
Twenty-five years in the making.
The network you see today grew out of a long line of community-building work. Some of it worked, some of it ran ahead of its time, and all of it taught us something. This is that story in brief.
- 2000
Community Enabler
Community Enabler Pty Ltd is where it all began: the frameworks, the platform architecture, and the idea of community networking, building a network of online local communities and communities of interest. It was one of Australia's first social enterprises, built on a model of distributing 80% of profits back to members and to the charities and community groups they chose.
- 2001
Co-opworld
The pre-launch site and first working version, built to test interest in a platform for the next generation of capitalism. We called it co-opitalism: capitalism powered by community commerce, where the value people create together is shared among them.
- 2009
Cagora, the Community Agora
The main platform launched under a new name, Cagora, after the agora, the marketplace of ancient Greece. It brought communities together online, including 3D virtual expos, years before most people had heard of a virtual event.
- 2012
Community Enabler and Cagora cease trading
The companies closed. The ideas did not. The frameworks, the architecture and the belief in community networking carried forward, and the Cagora name has returned as our network for communities of interest.
- 2020 to 2023
Climate work with Rotary
Our founder Rob Anderson served on several environmental committees, including as co-chair of the climate task force of ESRAG, the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group. The role supported its task forces on food waste, plant-rich diets, clean cookstoves and renewable energy, and showed how much good work is happening, and how rarely the people doing it know about each other.
- 2023
Climateers Pty Ltd is founded
Founded to help rewrite the end of the climate crisis story by 2030. Four founders, and the mix explains a lot about how it works: two chemical engineers, a social innovator and an operator.
- 2024
The first Action Summit
Our first Action Summit brought the food waste sector into one room for a day: food businesses, solution providers, local government and the people who fund and regulate them. Run as a structured design thinking process rather than a conference, it showed that the most lasting output is the relationships people leave with.
- 2026
Care Share Do and the wider network
Care Share Do launches in Victoria in October, a free map of the people and organisations who care, share and do, with Climateers as its climate zone and Cagora for interests. Alongside it comes the wider network of sites and products, held together by one parent company, Our Common Grounds, and one shared data commons underneath them all.