FairMail India photographer Anil Rao

I am Anil Rao from an old Indian city called Varanasi. I am 16 years old. I have a part time job as a photographer in fair trade card company called FairMail which gives me 50% of the profit of the cards printed with pictures taken by me. This money I only can spend on my educational and housing needs.

In India the government schools are made for the poor students. But these schools don’t teach so nicely and the student has to work hard if he has studied at these schools and wants to go for higher studies. With the financial conditions of my family I could only afford to go to the government schools where the condition for studying is not so good. The only way to get good conditions for studying is to get admission in private English school which asks for high fees every month. This amount couldn’t be afforded by my family. After getting a part time job in FairMail I earned the amount of money which was sufficient for me to pay the fees of a good private school.

Anil and his family

When I initially went in to my new school (which was private) I was the only guy who had weak financial conditions in his family. I was so uncomfortable to go to school because I didn’t have so many nice friends. It was hard for me to convince my mind to go to school. Regularly I was suspended from FairMail for one month for not going to school. But slowly I made nice friends and started going to school every day. And as a result I got good marks in my recent exams. And slowly I got out of the special teenage condition and convinced my mind that this is my school.