Green Business is Women’s Business: Meet the Eco-Heroes Building Something Real

Local women with their products, including cookies, tamanu soap, tamanu oil, and other handicrafts.

On May 9, 2026, Sudamala Resort Sanur in Bali hosted the Women Ecopreneurs Market Day — twenty booths, dozens of women, and products ranging from fermented goods to natural textiles and handwoven crafts, all made by small businesses from across Indonesia.

One of those booths belonged to Balwana Foundation.

We came as exhibitors representing the Sinergi Mekarsari Lestari Cooperative from Karangduwur, Kebumen — a group of women who, two years ago, were harvesting tamanu nuts by hand with no real income to show for it. We brought our Salaka Cookies, our Andamoi natural soaps, and our story. Not a polished pitch — the real one. About trial and error in a small production kitchen. About three women producing 65 pouches of cookies per cycle and calling that a breakthrough, because it was.

We also had a slot in the Lab — the workshop sessions running alongside the market. Standing in front of other ecopreneurs from Yogyakarta, Sumatra, and beyond, we talked about what it actually takes to turn forest resources into a product someone will buy. The banana flour we're developing. The turmeric we over-dried on the first harvest. The tamanu soap, which started as a household experiment, now has a waiting list in the local market.

That conversation mattered more than the booth.

What the Women Ecopreneurs Lab Is Actually Doing

The Lab has been running since 2025 under Women’s Earth Alliance. It works with women-led businesses on the nuts-and-bolts stuff — pricing, market positioning, supply chains, who to call when you need a buyer. Aziza, founder of Kriya Kite, said in Bali that the program gave her a chance to show her work to people who could actually give useful feedback, not just compliments.

That's a real gap. Most small eco-businesses don't fail because their products are bad. They fail because the founder never had access to anyone who could say: "Your margins won't work at that volume" or "This market won't pay that price." The Lab tries to close that gap.

What the Market Day Looked Like

Twenty booths. Busy. A banana-stem weaving workshop that drew a crowd. A lot of conversation between founders who don't usually get to be in the same room.

For us, the most useful part was seeing what other cooperatives had figured out — and what they were still struggling with. Several groups had the same challenge we do: a great product, an unclear path to scale. A few had cracked distribution in ways we hadn't tried. We exchanged contacts. We'll see what comes of it.