Growing Hope Through Eco-Therapy: Should SAS Scale Its Rural Women's Green Enterprise?

A Case on Social-Enterprise Scaling, Digital Inclusion, and Community Resilience

Abstract

Late on a Friday afternoon, Aishah stood at the edge of the small community garden behind the village hall in Kampung Harmoni. A roll of jute twine hung from her wrist while a group of women shaped kokedama - small plant-root balls wrapped in soil, moss, and twine - for the next online order. A younger participant repeated a short product video on her phone, turning the moss ball slowly until the light looked right. Two years earlier, the same women had been struggling with the collapse of tourism income and the isolation that followed the pandemic. Now they debated background colours, captions, and courier packaging.

The transformation was real but still fragile. Sahabat Alam Sekitar Sejahtera Malaysia (SAS), a community-based environmental organisation, had helped build a garden, a peer-support circle, basic digital skills, and a small stream of product sales. Yet the project was concentrated in one village, its records were informal, production was uneven, and nearly every operational question still reached Aishah. Two neighbouring communities had asked SAS to replicate the programme. A potential funder wanted a plan, a budget, and evidence that the model could work beyond Kampung Harmoni.