Connection Thursday: gotong royong, and the work no one carries alone
In Bali, when a neighbour’s roof needs mending or a temple ceremony needs preparing, nobody sends out a job listing. Word passes through the banjar, the neighbourhood council every household belongs to, and people simply turn up. Someone brings bamboo. Someone brings food. Someone who has done this before shows the younger ones how. By the afternoon, the work is done, and it belongs to everyone a little.
Across Indonesia this way of working has a name: gotong royong, mutual cooperation. In Bali, the voluntary work people give to their temple and community is often called ngayah. Most Connection Thursdays we write about one group of people behind our products. Today we want to write about the idea that sits underneath all of them.
A national idea, and a village habit
Gotong royong is old enough that nobody can date it, but it became a national word in June 1945. In the speech that laid out Pancasila, the founding principles of the Indonesian state, Sukarno said that if the five principles had to be squeezed into one, that one would be gotong royong. A country of thousands of islands chose shared work as its common ground.
In Bali you can still see it most weeks of the year. The towering ogoh-ogoh figures paraded on the eve of Nyepi are built over weeks by the young people of each banjar, after school and after work, with materials and skills pooled from the whole neighbourhood. No single person could make one. That is rather the point.
Why this matters to a small-batch maker
Nothing we make is made alone. Coconut farmers, forest families, the women of Munti Gunung, the team pouring each batch, and the rider who carries refills through Ubud’s lanes all hold one part of the work. Refill culture is the same. A refill station only works because many people choose to bring a bottle back. One person refilling is a habit. A neighbourhood refilling is a system, which is why refill stations so often become meeting places.
We will be honest: no brand can manufacture gotong royong, and we would not want to borrow a word that belongs to a whole people as a slogan. But we can learn from its logic. Shared work is lighter work, and the things a community builds together tend to last.
The takeaway: share one errand this week
Here is a small way to practise it at home. Choose one errand you would do anyway and make it shared:
- Collect a neighbour’s or colleague’s empty bottles along with your own, and make one refill trip for two households.
- Split a larger home-care purchase with a friend instead of each buying small.
- Join one local clean-up, even for an hour, and bring someone with you.
If you are starting a shared refill shelf, the products that empty fastest are the best place to begin. Our Natural Dish Soap and Natural Laundry Detergent are everyday staples, so they suit a shared shelf well. Fill one bottle each, label it, and pass the second one over the fence. That is how most good things in Bali have always been done: together, and without much fuss.
