Rituals and Tiny Miracles: Small acts for big change

The Tiny Miracles foundation, founded in 2011, has an important mission: to help find a scalable solution to end poverty and inspire others to do the same.  With their holistic approach they improve the wellbeing of people and create better lives for generations to come. The goal is to enable 1 million people to get and stay out of poverty. For that to succeed, we need to create a more equal world on all levels.

 

Giving more than money

One of the things that makes Tiny Miracles so unique is that it involves not just corporate sponsors donating money, but also a holistic approach to giving those less fortunate the tools they need to break out of the poverty cycle. They do this by focusing on five pillars: Healthcare, Education, Skills Training, Awareness, and Celebration. As their website rightfully points out, “Making miracles happen can only be achieved if you transform all areas of life simultaneously. You can build a health clinic, but as long as people have no access to safe drinking water you won’t be able to make any progress. You can put children to school but if they don’t have any food, what good will that do? Tackling the fundamentals first and building awareness and knowledge from a solid basis has proven to create a profound and lasting impact.”

 

Inspiration by numbers

Profound and lasting is right. Programmes began in an area populated by 700 people who lived in an extremely dangerous red-light district. To this date, 8 communities and more than 3,000 community members are actively engaged. Tiny Miracles is responsible for starting a clean water programme, a public health clinic, and raising women’s and men’s wages from less than 1 euro a day to the average middle-class salary. Children now attend English schools, more and more adolescents are attending university and the healthcare centre has dropped mortality rates substantially.  

 

Lighting the fire within

All of these things—among many other initiatives—are responsible for empowering these communities. As Meuter puts it, “What we do is provide opportunities, which changes people’s way of thinking—we increase their self-confidence so that they really believe in creating their own destinies. We are all about lighting the fire within in them!”

 

What we do is provide opportunities, which changes people’s way of thinking—we increase their self-confidence so that they really believe in creating their own destinies. We are all about lighting the fire within in them!

Laurien Meuter

Accessories for all  

Rituals has been a proud supporter of Tiny Miracles since 2011. CEO Raymond Cloosterman believes passionately in their mission to get 1 million people out of their poverty cycle by 2030. The goodie bag is a co-developed product and with orders of hundreds of thousands of pieces every year, it creates a lot of work for hard-working women who can now empower themselves to break the cycle of poverty they’re stuck in. As such, the stitching of this bag allows these communities to stitch together their own futures. 

  

For 2023, we’ve got a Summer of Joy exclusive – two bracelets, one to keep and one to give away. It's a virtuous cycle! What makes it even more virtuous is the fact that making these bracelets provides much-needed jobs to those in the community who are unable to do any other work.  

 

According to Tiny Miracles’ Founder, Laurien Meuter, “The elderly, mothers with newborn babies, mentally and physically challenged women, all these women come to our hired spaces in the communities and peacefully make these bracelets. It’s beautiful to watch. And with a volume this substantial, we’ll be able to hire 150 women for this work”   

 

It’s quite simply a game-changer of a product, one that Rituals and Tiny Miracles intentionally designed to be very simple to create - a virtuous cycle in every way! 

 

 

To learn more about this wonderful organisation, visit the Tiny Miracles website. Together we can create a more equal world. 

Laura Wabeke

Laura Wabeke

Translator, editor and copywriter Laura Wabeke is fascinated with words and the many innovative ways you can use them to express yourself. After nine years as a freelancer – hopping from the travel industry to media agencies, advertising and book editing – this in- house copywriter is now fluent in yoga, meditation, mindfulness and embracing the brand’s philosophy of finding beauty and happiness in the smallest of things.