By Skyping directly with the CEO of Context Cards the teenagers learned more about what kind of images their customers are looking for and what the latest trends are.
The group that travelled to the Northern Inca Empire
The FairMail Peru team has just returned from an epic photography trip into the Northern Andes. In the area around the northern capital of the former Inca empire the teenagers travelled together with a group of Italian, American and Dutch photography enthusiasts looking for the best images of local beauty.
This 4-minute video gives a good impression of their visit to former Inca ruins, waterfalls, thermal baths and an authentic bull market.
Click here if you want to travel with the locals too and join us on one of our next photography trips.
Yep, new cards out again. We have some great new fair trade cards that are just waiting to be sent!
For this new collection the teenagers had to be double as creative. Not only in taking the photographs but also making the objects in the pictures themselves. Check out some of their newest cards below.
11 years after FairMail started, former photographer Yuli (23, Peru) gave us the best birthday present of all by graduating from University.
An amazing achievement if you consider that as a little girl Yuli had to help her parents select stones and gravel at the quarry to help make ends meet after moving from the mountains to the big city. One generation later their daughter got a bachelor title in Languages from the highly ranked national university of Trujillo. And Yuli is not planning to stop right there.
An amazing path
Yuli entered FairMail in 2008 at the age of 15 years, after being scouted from the YMCA project that works with at risk teenagers near the Trujillo land-fill. Back then she was a very shy girl but it was already clear that she wanted to achieve more in life.
She reached her goal of passing the entrance exam for the National University on her second try in 2013, the same year she travelled to Europe for FairMail’s promotional tour. She soon got the hang of travelling, going to the United States for the past 2 winters to practice her English while working in resort hotels.
Next steps
Yuli wants to keep on studying to get a MSc. degree in Education. “I am checking to see if I can do my master degree in another country through a scholarship or something like that. I always believed that investing in education is the best step towards success” she says. No doubt that the income she keeps earning from the sale of her FairMail cards, on top of the 8.744 euro she already earned, will come in handy for that.
Yuli next to her very proud mother
Shining example
Yuli’s success is not only benefitting herself. She has also become a shining example for her surroundings. 2 of her brothers and sisters are now also in university. And during her 2 years as co-manager of FairMail Peru she inspired many of the current FairMail teenagers to believe in their own dreams. “I always told everyone that you have to do what you really like if you want to pick the fruits of your efforts.” Yuli says.
Wise lessons from Yuli
Yuli has more lessons for all of us: “I also believe that is very important to never disappoint the people that believe in you, that support you and that love you. It doesn’t matter what your goal in life is, what really matters is how much effort, dedication and affection you put into achieving it.”
This way she shows great respect to her parents who greatly sacrificed themselves so their children could have a better future. And also making the best possible use of the assistance FairMail gives to underprivileged teenagers.
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!
Remember the news about the “Mission Possible” project aimed at helping the FairMail teenagers identify and chase their own dreams?
Only a few months later, Paul and Dante have already achieved their goal by getting admitted into a soccer academy. Step one according to them to follow the steps of their soccer heroes Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar.
Paul showing off his skills
True empowerment
The core of the Mission Possible project is that the teenagers have to come up with their OWN dreams and their OWN action plan with steps that THEY can take. It would probably seem a lot easier if FairMail took them by the hand to undertake the necessary actions. But real empowerment according to us is to guide them from one step behind, leaving all the action and decisions to them, and of course their parents.
Perhaps taking some wrong decisions along the way. But hey, you can only learn from your mistakes right? And if in the end they achieve their goals they can feel extra proud and generate even more self-esteem as the success was really thanks to their own efforts!
How to get to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona?
In the case of Paul and Dante their dream is to become a professional soccer player. That way they hope to be able to help their families and make them proud. Both love soccer and play every day with the other kids at the Mundo de Ninos boys’ home where they both live. To get to a higher level and possibly be scouted by professional soccer clubs they needed to enter a soccer academy. Which is not as easy as becoming member of a soccer club in Europe for example. Through their own effort and asking help from people around them, they got a chance to show their talent at FC Cantera in Trujillo. They apparently impressed their coaches as both got admitted!
Dante’s dream is winning the golden ball
Hopefully in the next newsletter we will have more news about other teenagers achieving their Mission Possible. Stay tuned.
There are already many videos online showing what FairMail does on our YouTube channel. What was still missing was a video where the teenagers themselves explain what a day in the office looks like, what FairMail means to them and what they have gotten out of it.
In this video you can learn it all and more, in their own words.
FairMail’s teenage photographers offer fair trade cards for all different occasions. Including fair trade Birthday cards of course!
Photographic birthday cards
In our webshop you can see the results of the teenagers’ creativity and hard work. Their photographic birthday cards include photographs of balloons, birthday cakes plus some typical images of how they celebrate birthdays in Peru.
The 14th of May is Mothers Day! Thé day to tell your mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, sister or friend how happy you are they are always there for their children, and you. What’s a better way to do so than with a personal fair trade Mothers Day card?
As you can expect from our young photographers they made some heart-warming pictures for this special day. This year you can choose from 30 different Fairtrade Mother’s Day cards.
There are also 10 different motives to choose from to personalize your own Mother’s day card on-line. After that our partner Greetz takes care of the printing and sending of your unique card. You can even ask them to send along a box of chocolates or a flower bouquet! Click here to personalize your Mother’s day card on-line.
Agents for Change across five continents will join hand in hand for Fair Trade and the Planet to celebrate World fair Trade Day on 13 May 2017. Join us and be part of the movement by sending out a fair trade greeting card to someone you have been thinking about lately.
25% discount on fairtrade cards
This year we made joining in easier than ever, offering a 25% discount on all of FairMail’s fair trade greeting cards. Just enter WFTD2017 in the discount code field at the end of placing your order and you will receive the discount (without affecting the earnings per card by the teenagers by the way!).
WFTO’s World Fair Trade Day on the 13th of May
#Agents of Change
The FairMail Peru team has also been part of the preparations for World Fair Trade Day. Contributing their Agents of Change photograph and video to the WFTO’s campaign.
