World Prematurity Day celebrations 17th November
As part of our World Prematurity Day celebrations on 17th November, we’re co-ordinating volunteers to help us provide morning or afternoon teas for all of the neonatal units throughout New Zealand. We’ll be providing purple (the colour of World Prematurity Day) balloons, streamers, tablecloths, etc.
To register interest in supporting your local neonatal unit, please head to: littlemiraclestrust.org.nz/calling-all-bakers
Sharing personal stories – Giving hope & encouragement and raising awareness 
Neonatal journeys can be full of stress and anxiety. Due to this, providing hope and encouragement to parents on a neonatal journey is key. We receive a lot of positive feedback from families in a neonatal unit who read the stories we help to share. They say that they feel strength, hope and positivity knowing that they are not alone going through these experiences and feeling certain emotions.
The stories help to raise awareness of neonatal journeys and the stress and anxiety involved – plus the wonderful people and organisations involved in the care of the families and their precious babies. If you’d like to share your story, please contact us info@littlemiraclestrust.org.nz
Not only do they raise funds (to help us do more of this) but they are great for raising awareness – with a constant need to top-up the fliers that we make available.
Tiny Cuddles with Mediaworks & The Breeze
The Little Miracles Trust are proud to be supported by the team at Mediaworks Foundation Wellington during Neonatal November.
The Tiny Cuddles campaign will enable us to purchase much needed La-Z-Boy chairs for the Wellington and Lower Hutt neonatal units.
Find out more by visiting our website here
Lighting Up Purple
Thanks to The Little Miracles Trust a record number of iconic NZ landmarks and iconic buildings will be lit up purple alongside international landmarks, to join in a campaign for World Prematurity Day on 17 November. This is the fourth time New Zealand has taken part in the ‘Lighting Up Purple’ campaign, which is designed to raise awareness of the 15 million babies born prematurely worldwide each year.
We work throughout the year to encourage uptake of the ‘Lighting Up Purple’ cause and this year for the first time Eden Park and the Sky Tower will be joining other well-known New Zealand landmarks.
See more details and our full list of participants here
Seeking your support
We don’t receive any Government funding and are entirely reliant on the generosity of individuals, companies and organisations in the form of donations, value-in-kind donations, grants, sponsorship and fundraising events to supplement operating costs and fund our services and initiatives.
If you would like to support our work and help to make more of this happen, please consider making a donation here: littlemiraclestrust.org.nz/donation.
Covering all neonatal journeys
At the top of this page we mentioned the drivers of creating ‘Neonatal November’. A key one was to ensure that we were better positioned to cover, and represent, all neonatal journeys – widening beyond World Prematurity Day (November 17th) and giving a greater platform for those full-term babies who required specialist care in a neonatal unit. On launching Neonatal November, it was so pleasing to receive feedback such as this:
“LOVE this initiative. We’re one of the families who had a full-term baby and a reasonably long (and sad) NICU journey. I want to support the Little Miracles Trust because of all the amazing work they did for us and like to keep up to date on fundraising and so on, but do sometimes feel left out (for lack of a better word and yes, I know it seems a bit precious!) because of all the prem baby posts. I’m looking forward to reading what you have in store for November =)”
“I think this is a great initiative! Both World Prematurity Day and Neonatal November have their place :)”
“Awesome to see you raising awareness that NICU doesn’t automatically mean prem. Born at 41+2, weighing in at 9lb2oz and receiving full body cooling, our son didn’t fit the typical image of a NICU baby.”
“I love this. We are a family who had a full term baby in nicu and the staff were very very amazing”
Can you help?
We get a lot of positive feedback from families in a neonatal unit who read these stories and feel strength, hope and positivity knowing that they are not alone going through these experiences and feeling certain emotions. We’re always looking for personal stories to share. If you would like to discuss sharing the story of your neonatal journey, we’d love to hear from you. Please email info@littlemiraclestrust.org.nz