Connection Thursday: the women of Munti Gunung and the hands behind your bottle
Eastern Bali holds a village that does not appear on most maps. Munti Gunung is a high, arid place. Water is scarce, rain is unpredictable, and for generations the slope of the land has made farming an unforgiving way to earn a living. For years, this geography meant that women from the village often had to leave home to find work, sometimes migrating to Denpasar and selling small goods on the street. The work was unstable, the conditions were difficult, and families were stretched across two worlds.
Then a different idea took root. A women’s cooperative formed in the village itself, training local craftspeople to weave baskets, dry botanicals, and produce small components that could earn a stable income at home. Today, that cooperative is one of our longest partnerships.
What this looks like in your bottle
Many of the natural fibers, wraps, and small textile elements that travel with our products begin at Munti Gunung. The work is patient. Plant material is harvested by hand, sorted, dried, and woven into the shapes that hold or accompany our blends. When you unwrap a gift set or notice the small details that surround a soap or oil, you are holding hours of skilled labor that did not come from a remote factory or an anonymous third-party supplier.
The income that flows back from this work is not large by global standards, but it is steady. It pays for school fees, healthcare visits, and the slow work of keeping a community rooted in its own land. Mothers can stay closer to their children. Daughters can continue their education. The decision to remain in the village becomes possible again.
Why this matters for everyday skincare
Most beauty supply chains are designed to be invisible. Packaging arrives in pallets, finishes are anonymous, and the question of who made what is rarely asked. We have chosen to work in the opposite direction. Naming the cooperative behind a wrap or basket is not a marketing exercise, it is a quiet act of accounting. It says: these hands are part of this product, and the income from your purchase reaches them.
This is the same principle we follow with the Forestwise partnership in Kalimantan, where wild-harvested illipe butter ties our formulations back to rainforest communities. The geography is different, the materials are different, the people are different. The thread that runs between them is the same: real care moves both ways.
What we mean by connection
This is what Connection Thursday is really about. The objects we use every day are made by people, and the choices we make as consumers ripple back through long chains of labor, sourcing, and care. When a brand works directly with a cooperative, the chain is shorter and the impact is more honest. Buying conscious skincare is not a moral act on its own, but choosing brands that publish their partnerships, name their cooperatives, and route real income back to the people who make the work possible is one quiet way to align a daily ritual with a wider sense of care.
Explore further
If you want to read more about how these partnerships shape our work, our guide to a natural skincare routine covers the bigger framework, and our previous Connection Thursday on illipe butter and the Forestwise partnership traces another thread in the same fabric.
