From Bali to Belize: How the World Is Quietly Rebuilding Work From the Ground Up

A Herb Garden, a Factory Floor, and a Forest — All Telling the Same Story

Dwi Kuntari didn't set out to change the economy. She set out to make jamu — the traditional Indonesian herbal drink her grandmother used to brew in Yogyakarta. But with support from the ILO, her small enterprise, Jamu Deka, became something bigger: a model for green growth, women's entrepreneurship, and dignified jobs woven together in a single courtyard in Central Java. As the ILO reports, Kuntari's journey is now a blueprint for how small businesses can drive environmental and economic goals at the same time.

Halfway around the world, in the rainforest villages of southern Belize, Maya community leaders are doing something similar — but with centuries of land knowledge behind them. Field visits and consultations under the EU-funded ILO PROSPER project are shaping locally driven solutions for sustainable livelihoods, placing indigenous communities not as recipients of development aid but as its architects.

These two stories — a herb entrepreneur in Yogyakarta and a Maya council in Belize — sit at opposite ends of the globe. But they are part of the same quiet revolution reshaping how the world thinks about work, growth, and who gets to lead.

Dialogue Before Disruption

Thailand's auto industry is a case in point. The country is one of Southeast Asia's largest vehicle manufacturers, and the electric vehicle transition threatens to redraw its entire industrial map. Rather than letting that disruption arrive unannounced on the factory floor, a different approach is taking hold.

In a recent episode of the ILO's Future of Work podcast, Georg Leutert of IndustriALL Global Union described how social dialogue — structured conversation between workers, employers, and governments — is being used to steer Thailand's automotive sector through the EV shift. The goal isn't to slow the transition. It's to make sure workers aren't left behind by it. Talking first, transforming together.

That instinct — build trust before you build policy — is showing up everywhere.

Measuring What Actually Matters

In Costa Rica, Mario Durán Fernández, National Director of the country's cooperative statistics body, is wrestling with a deceptively hard question: how do you count an economy built on solidarity? As the ILO's Spotlight series reports, Costa Rica is pioneering new methods to measure the social and solidarity economy — cooperatives, mutual associations, community enterprises — sectors that generate real jobs and real welfare but routinely fall through the cracks of standard GDP accounting.

"If you can't measure it, you can't defend it in a budget meeting," the logic goes. Costa Rica is proving that you can — and that when you do, the numbers are striking.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, the Association of Business Development Service Providers (ABDSI) and the ILO convened in Seminyak, Bali in early April 2026 to launch a national roadmap for strengthening the country's micro, small, and medium enterprise ecosystem. MSMEs employ the vast majority of Indonesia's workforce. The roadmap is designed to sharpen the skills of the consultants and trainers who support those businesses — the often-invisible scaffolding behind millions of livelihoods.

Young People, Green Jobs, and a Reason to Stay

More than 200 young people in Viet Nam now have a clearer path into the green economy, following a capacity-building initiative reported by the ILO in late March 2026. The programme moved participants from passive awareness of climate-linked careers to active preparation — equipping Vietnamese youth with skills for decent work in sectors that didn't exist a generation ago.

Youth unemployment and climate change are often treated as separate problems. Viet Nam's programme suggests they share a solution.

Safety, Solidarity, and New Alliances

On April 14, 2026, the ILO and China's State Administration for Market Regulation signed a new agreement on occupational safety and health under the Global Development Initiative — a signal that workplace safety is becoming a pillar of international development cooperation, not just a domestic regulatory checkbox. With millions of workers across the Global South still exposed to preventable hazards, the partnership carries real weight.

That same week, Yukiko Arai took up her role as Director of the ILO's Decent Work Technical Support Team for the Southern Cone, based in Santiago. Her mandate spans Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay — countries navigating their own transitions in labour markets, inequality, and social protection. New leadership at a pivotal moment.

The Pattern Running Through All of It

Pull back far enough, and a single thread connects Kuntari's herb garden to a Maya forest consultation, a Bangkok union negotiation, a Bali roadmap workshop, and a Beijing signing ceremony.

In each case, the old model — growth first, equity later — is being challenged. Not with grand ideology, but with practical tools: better statistics in Costa Rica, better training in Indonesia, better dialogue in Thailand, better safety standards in China, better inclusion in Belize and Viet Nam.

The world's economy is being rebuilt, one deliberate conversation at a time. And increasingly, the people leading those conversations aren't in capital cities. They're in Yogyakarta courtyards, rainforest villages, and factory break rooms — deciding, together, what decent work actually looks like.

That's the story worth watching.