Ethical Pulse - from the Ethical Junction membership

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Rachel makes two Tiny Differences

Rachel Watkyn has a marvellous story and tremendously outspoken views on all ethical and green issues.

She overcame a life threatening illness where she lost everything! She was diagnosed in 2000 and was back to health (although not fully!) in 2005. Even now she must attend regular check ups. She is the founder of two companies; one of which saves lives and gives people back their dignity and respect and provides them with an income in Africa and the other one helping to save this earth!

She is still a single girl with a hell of a lot to offer but career and others come before her and any man. Although she is looking!

Her two main companies are tinydifference.com and tinyboxcompany.com (which is the UK’s first and only ‘recycled only’ packaging company) and the websites are: www.tinydifference.com and www.tinyboxcompany.com she is also a director of Bombshell Promotions which looks after singing artists so she manages them too!

Quite a wide and varied day she has.                                                                                            

Here is her story from Tiny Difference:
 

 

I (Rachel) was out in Sierra Leone in the late 1990’s and saw first hand the desperation and poverty, including children dismembered by the rebels, left with nothing, and families torn apart because of the civil war. 

Since my first trip, I have been back to Africa a number of times, looking to see how I could make a tiny difference to these people’s lives.  The charity aid given to many parts of Africa provides life saving food and clothing, but the problem is that it only provides a short term solution – so basically these people rely on the next aid lorry coming along. 

There are many many very poor but talented artisans all over the poorest parts of Africa who really want to work for a living, to re-gain their dignity and to support their families – they just need people to buy their products!

The problem with many of the products that these skilled craftspeople in Africa make is that they are designed for their culture and not ours.

Which is why I hired designers here in the UK to help design pieces that the craftspeople in Africa could make, but which would suit the fashionable UK market.  One of our designers (Mieke) has proved absolutely fabulous and she is responsible for the original design of most of the stunning jewellery in the Tiny Difference range.

We now have a tiny team of us here that work alongside a number of communities in Africa and Thailand to bring you this unique collection.

 And Here is Rachel’s Tiny Box Company Story:

Whilst setting up our sister company The Tiny Difference Company Limited, which specialises in fair and ethical trade jewellery and accessories, we decided we wanted to package the products in recycled material.  However this proved to be more of a pipe dream than reality.

After searching for 3 months we finally found a manufacturer that makes jewellery and gift boxes from recycled material. We also found that we were not the only company that cared about the environment and that lots of other companies wanted similar packaging… and so The Tiny Box Company was born.

Rachel is an amazing woman totally dedicated to her causes of saving lives and this earth.

For more information please contact:

Christian@tinyboxcompany.com
 

Or call 01342 322333

 

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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