Water changes everything.

It allows children to stay healthier, creates opportunities for families to earn a better living, and gives communities the foundation to shape their own future.
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Across Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara islands, these opportunities are often limited by something as simple—and as essential—as access to clean water.

Komodo Water, a women-led social enterprise and Certified B Corp, is addressing this challenge by bringing solar-powered clean water and ice production to Indigenous Manggarai communities and Bajo sea nomads. Working alongside local cooperatives, Komodo Water helps communities own and operate their own water facilities, making clean water more affordable while creating local jobs and keeping economic benefits within the villages.

Today, the enterprise serves more than 33,000 people across nine communities.

The impact extends beyond drinking water. Fishing is an important source of income across the region, but without reliable access to ice, fishermen risk losing part of their catch to spoilage. Komodo Water's solar-powered ice allows them to preserve their catch longer and earn more from the fish they have already harvested rather than catching more.

The Reciprocity Fund approved a $50,000 loan to help finance two new community-owned water facilities in Flores. The new systems will provide reliable access to safe drinking water for Indigenous Manggarai communities, reducing the cost of water by up to 40%.

Local cooperatives play a direct role in operating the facilities and distributing water, helping ensure that the benefits—and profits—remain within the communities.

For us, this is what impact investing looks like: financing practical businesses that solve everyday challenges while creating lasting opportunities for people to build better lives.

Some of the most valuable opportunities aren't planted—they're already growing.

Each rainy season in the Peruvian Andes, Boletus luteus mushrooms emerge beneath pine forests. The relationship is so central to the business that it inspired the name Simbiosis: the mushroom grows in symbiosis with the pine trees around it.

For more than 300 Quechua women, this seasonal forest resource has become an important source of additional income.

Simbiosis, a Peruvian social enterprise, works with women in rural Andean communities to harvest, dry, and prepare the mushrooms for sale in national and international markets, particularly Europe. The five- to seven-month mushroom season allows women to earn additional income while continuing activities such as small-scale farming and raising livestock.

The Reciprocity Fund provided a $75,000 loan to help Simbiosis install solar dryers that are far more efficient than their legacy dryers, leading to a 30% increase in dried mushroom yield and stronger earning opportunities for Quechua women and their communities.

But the opportunity extends beyond mushrooms.

Simbiosis works with communities on forest management practices that help make pine forests more productive and economically valuable. In parts of the Andes where families may otherwise turn to mining for additional income, Simbiosis demonstrates another possibility: creating livelihoods from a natural resource that was once largely overlooked.

By connecting healthy forests with economic opportunity, Simbiosis gives communities another reason to care for the landscapes they depend on—while creating income close to home.