FairMail Peru team during beach clean-up

The great thing about FairMail is that it allows our teenagers to transform the free resource of local beauty into money to pay for their own education. During four “Garbage Art” workshops we went one step further, transforming garbage collected during clean-ups into large scale works of art. Some pictures of the art work will be available on new FairMail cards soon.

The workshops were inspired by the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and his Waste Land project at Brazil’s largest garbage dump on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. After seeing his work the FairMail teenagers in Peru and India developed their own ideas for huge works of art made from garbage.

FairMail India team collecting garbage

To make the garbage art suitable for FairMail cards we gave it a little FairMail twist, using greeting card themes like “Good trip”, “Freedom”, “Thank you” and “Get well soon”. With the whole team we headed out into the Nagwa slum and along Huanchaco’s polluted beach to collect garbage in the necessary colours to actually make the art work.

Below you can see the end result and “Making of” time lapse videos of the four groups of FairMail teenagers: “Los 5 artistas”, “The photo Ninja’s”, “los Wheels” and “Los Genios”.

Thanks to FairMail volunteers Julian, Jessica, Michael and Samantha who organized and helped out during the workshops.

Los 5 artistas (FairMail India):

Los Wheels (FairMail Peru):

The Photo Ninja’s (FairMail India)