Connection Thursday: the women of Munti Gunung, in the dry hills of East Bali
When people ask us where their money goes when they buy a bottle of soap or oil, we like to answer with names, not slogans. One of those names is Munti Gunung.
Munti Gunung sits in the dry hills of East Bali, a part of the island most visitors never see. There are no rice terraces here, no easy water. For generations the land has asked more of its people than it gives back, and families have carried that weight quietly. It is a long way, in every sense, from the Bali of postcards.
We work with the Munti Gunung Social Enterprise, which supports women and families in this region through fair work and skill-building. The idea is simple and old-fashioned: honest work, paid honestly, taught patiently, so that a skill stays in a family long after any single order is filled. Care that compounds, rather than care that performs.
Why this is part of a skincare brand
It would be easy to keep sourcing and craft in a spreadsheet, out of sight. We think that hides the most important part of the story. A product is never only its ingredients. It is also the hands that grew, gathered, and made it, and the conditions those hands work in.
Munti Gunung is one thread in a wider web of partnerships we return to often: Forestwise in Kalimantan, who wild-harvest our illipe butter and kukui oil while helping rebuild forest; Aluan, for coconut grown with care; Sungai Watch and Seven Clean Seas, who pull plastic out of Bali’s rivers and the wider ocean. Different regions, different work, one principle. What we give, we get back.
What connection actually looks like
Connection is not a marketing word for us on a Thursday. It is East Bali women learning a trade they can keep. It is a forest in Kalimantan standing a little taller because harvesting it pays more than clearing it. It is the quiet accounting of a river that has less plastic in it this year than last.
We have written before about the family that has kept this going since 1989, and about the botanicals themselves in our note on kukui oil and coconut oil. This is the human layer underneath both. Heritage is not only who founded a company. It is everyone whose work it depends on.
So the next time you cup a little oil in your hands, we hope you feel the reach of it. Botanicals from one island, craft from another set of hills, care travelling in both directions. That is the whole point. Not perfection, but connection.
