Dgroups is the starting point for fostering groups and communities in international development. It is run by Bellanet, World Bank, DFID, IICD, HIVOS, OneWorld, ICA and UNAIDS as a partnership which caters to both individuals and organisations by offering tools and services that bring people together.
Whether a group is trying to support a team, a group, a network, a partnership or a community, D-Groups aims to provide the capacity to do this in an environment, which is simple, non-commercial, respectful of privacy, and targeted at low bandwidth users in the South
In 2003 the partnership decided to create an Open Source version. This collaborative development is hosted and managed by metaLAB on behalf of the DGroups Partnership. Since July 2004 metaLAB has been working with CSIR South Africa to develop an initial open source version of Dgroups based on Coefficient for formal evaluation by the DGroups partners and members.
By July 2012, Dgroups counted 2136 active communities, with around 195.892 registered users. It delivers around 400.000 email messages each day, half of which are exchanged with and within African countries.