FairMail’s Finding Happiness photo book

According to 16 year old Angelica “The real secret of happiness is to request a lot from oneself and very little from others”.

She and her fellow FairMail photographers probably possess this wisdom through the hardships they have experienced in their young lives, forcing them to learn to turn adversities into forces for positive change. Their finest lessons in finding happiness have now been bundled into FairMail’s newest book, accompanied by the teenagers’ own photographs of course.

Simple happiness
The longer we work with FairMail teenagers, the more we realize that their unique talent lies in teaching us how to be happy with few material goods. This is what we started calling “simple happiness”.

In the areas where the teenagers live they can easily shoot images of people finding happiness in sharing moments with friends, playing with an old tire or having fun with a bucket of water. A huge contrast with teenagers of their age in the west who are often longing for the newest gadgets and fast kicks in pursuit of (often short lived) happiness. Proven by the success of the sale of the teenagers’ pictures on their fair trade greeting cards it seems that our customers like to be reminded of how to find this simple happiness.

Full of quotes and pictures by the FairMail teenagers

How to lead a happy life
Thinking about new products on which we can market the teenagers pictures we came up with the idea to publish a booklet with their own phrases and pictures showing us how to find happiness. During a 4 week period the teenagers brainstormed about what happiness means to them and how to lead a happy life. After that they started thinking about when or how to take the picture to accompany their quotes to bring across the message.

Finding Happiness Book
The result is this new book with the teenagers’ nicest quotes and best pictures. A great gift for a friend who is looking for some support or for yourself if you want to get some inspiration from the FairMail teenagers. It is available as hard-cover in English, German and Spanish through FairMail’s online Blurb bookstore.

The book wouldn’t have been possible without the help of volunteers Alex (lay-put), Cristina and Tom (photography training), Johanna, Ronja, Lukas and Anna (translation). So muuuuuchas gracias to them!