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First former FairMail India photographer admitted into national university

Wednesday, September 20th, 2017

Former FairMail India photographer Anil Rao

Ever since FairMail India had to close its doors there has been less news about the teenagers who used to be part of the FairMail India team. But this time we have some huge news: Anil Rao managed to pass the entrance exam and get admitted to study chemistry, zoology and botany at the BHU University in Varanasi! Passing the entrance exam is normally already a huge achievement but Anil managed to do so with even bigger challenges in his personal life.

Anil’s father passes away

Anil entered FairMail India at the age of 14 and was always somewhat the professor of the group, aiming to become a big man as he called it by studying at the BHU university. Just before finishing high school his father passed away due to tuberculosis, leaving his family behind with Anil as the oldest son. At that moment, we were all terribly worried he would have to give up his academic aspirations in order to earn a living for his family. Luckily his mother managed to earn some money and Anil could work as assistant manager for FairMail India at the time.

Anil with his family

Fighting tuberculosis

When FairMail India had to close his doors our partner Asha Deep employed Anil by making him responsible for the teenagers’ money withdrawals from their FairMail funds. Then tragedy struck again, this time his sister got TBC causing new stress and of course the fear the disease would continue to spread within the family. Eventually it did and Anil was also diagnosed with TBC.

After fighting the disease during more than a year Anil’s health improved and he could focus full force again on his study and prepare for the entrance exam with private tuition.

A dream comes true

With as result that Anil passed the entrance exam. On the 20th of July 2017, his dream came true and he will start his 3 year bachelor study at the public university, aiming at specializing in chemistry after 2 years. As it is a public university the costs of studying are quite low, so Anil hopes to save the earnings from the continued sale of his FairMail cards for his master’s study in the future.

It goes without saying that we are extremely proud of Anil and hope that his success is a source of inspiration for the other former FairMail teenagers in his surroundings.

Tags: anil rao, education, results, social impact, teenagers
Posted in FairMail, India | No Comments »

Update FairMail India, 2 years later

Wednesday, October 26th, 2016

FairMail India’s former photographer on the shore of the Ganges river

This month it is 2 years ago that FairMail India had to close its doors after the incidents that took place (read what happened here). Time for a short update on what has happened since.

Free on bail

The most important thing is that the FairMail team member who was put in prison for over 1 year is out of jail and back with his family since last year. Only on bail though, as the accusations against him still haven’t been properly investigated for a judge to be able to cast a verdict. After the hard time in jail the ongoing uncertainty of the court case outcome continues to cast a shadow on his future plans, making it even more difficult to move on.

Staying in touch

As the court case is not closed yet we think it is still too dangerous for FairMail founders Peter and Janneke to visit India personally. We have stayed in touch through group and individual Skype calls, facebook messages and e-mail. And with nearly weekly email contact with Asha Deep, the local school who is taking care of guiding the teenagers and paying them their share of the profit from the sale of their cards. One of FairMail’s former co-managers continues to work for Asha Deep to help with the money distribution and administration of the teenager’s education bills that we keep checking.

Money from card sale still coming in…

Over the past 2 years the Indian teenagers still earned 1.121.088 rupees (about 15.000 euro) with the sale of their cards and photos. As they haven’t been producing any new photographs, and our customers keep asking for new pictures for renewal of the FairMail spinners, their earnings are down nearly 50% compared to when they were still taking photographs for FairMail India.

… and providing structural improvements.

Despite not being able to continue in FairMail India until the retirement age of 19, all of the 9 teenagers that were participating in FairMail at the moment of closing have continued to pursue further education (8x) or got a decent job (1x). 4 of them finished high school this year. You care read more about each teenager on their updated profile pages.

No re-start of FairMail India?

Despite still earning money from the photographs they took over 2 years ago, all of the teenagers are still quite disappointed that FairMail India had to close its doors. They have also stated repeatedly that they hope that FairMail India will start up again in the future. However, we had to make clear that this is not possible for us. Although the fight between the two families seems to have calmed down, the family feud is not solved as this is a deep, generation long problem. We also feel that the mutual trust between some of the teenagers is broken, as well as our own trust in being able to understand and control the situation in case something similar will happen. Especially as we saw how the police case was totally corrupt and thus outside our influence. We do not want to take the risk of creating potential new tensions. This is why we decided to focus on just Peru.

Lessons Learnt

Looking back over the past 2 years it has been a bumpy ride. We were put in a situation we never intended to be in, that forced us to take decisions we hoped we would never have to take.

What we learnt is that in an honour culture as in India, family feuds and jealousy can lead to súch deep frustrations that people choose to really harm each other. It turned out we did not succeed to protect FairMail and its members enough from this danger. And we learnt to never underestimate it. The question is if this should stop us to try and empower teenagers, we think not: development is change and change often goes hand in hand with some sort of conflict. Luckily, in our 10 years of FairMail we have mostly seen supportive people around the teenagers, people who are proud and happy to see the FairMail teenagers grow. Grow to become creative, young adults working on their own future while they keep on supporting the family they come from.

Tags: India, Photographers
Posted in FairMail, India | No Comments »

Indian teenagers invest over 100.000 rupees in their housing

Friday, May 1st, 2015

Kaushal’s house with a new top floor

Despite the very sad news about FairMail India closing its doors in October 2014, we are happy that the sale of the Indian FairMail cards is still having a positive impact on the teenagers and their families. In the last few months of 2014 five of the teenagers invested more than 100.000 rupees (>1.500 euro) in the construction of their family homes.

For example 17 year old Aradhana started the construction of her families own house in the outskirts of Varanasi which means they will no longer have to pay rent from her father’s small wage as cart puller. Kaushal managed to provide his family with an improved second story of their home. Meanwhile Sandhya invested in fully replacing the tiny room she lived in with her entire family for a new 2 story house. Anil Kumar and Anil Rao also managed to make significant improvements to their homes and to provide due maintenance. In the case of Anil Rao allowing his family to earn more money renting out part of their home to other people.

Sandhya’s new home under construction

We are very happy with this tiny bit of good news after the difficult decision to close down FairMail India. Unfortunately our decision still seems like the least bad decision to take as tension between some of the former teenager’s families still persists. Also our former team member is still being held in jail since July 2014 on accusations which still haven’t been investigated properly. A very sad situation which seems increasingly difficult to influence despite our intents.

Tags: anil kumar, anil rao, aradhana, housing fund, impact, India, kaushal, Photographers, results, sandhya, social impact, teenagers
Posted in FairMail, India | No Comments »

FairMail teenagers teach us about “Simple Happiness”

Friday, December 5th, 2014

Simple happiness on a bicycle

Simple happiness with water

From feedback on our cards we learned that the FairMail teenagers have an important life lesson to teach us all, through their perspective on the world:

“More material wealth does not necessarily mean being more happy.”

Many of our teenager’s images show children having a lot of fun playing with an old tire or a bucket of water, of people simply relaxing and enjoying a rest in the sun or taking time to chat with each other on the street.

Simple happiness relaxing in the sun

These images show our customers in the west that having more material gadgets is less important for being happy than your perception on life, your ingenuity, having meaningful social relationships and a positive mind set.

In marketing terms you could say that this “Simple Happiness” is a unique selling point of our teenagers’ photography. So as FairMail is a social enterprise, totally dependent on the sales of our cards, we have decided to spend more attention making use of this natural strength of our teenagers and their surroundings to shoot images of “Simple Happiness”.

Anidela and Ruth making kites from trash

Time to see if the kites will fly

One such example was the kite workshop we organized in Peru a few months back. With leftover plastic garbage from the earlier “garbage art workshops” the teenagers made their own kites during class.

By being creative with the available resources and experimenting with designs and colour combinations some great kites were made.

During the next class they brought along their little sisters, brothers and neighbourhood friends to a kite flying photo shoot on the beach of Huanchaco, close to the FairMail office.

As the photos show it was a very fun day. Everybody enjoyed playing with the kites, dancing on the rhythm of the afternoon breeze until the sun went down. Sand, sun, beach, kites and friends were all the ingredients they needed. When it started getting cold we all headed back to the office for a nice cup of hot chocolate and looked back at a very productive (and low cost!) photo session.

Sun going down

Future FairMail card of simple happiness?

We hope the first kite cards will become available on FairMail cards soon. Please stay tuned to our webshop for the newest cards.

Tags: card collection, education, photography, simple happiness, stock photography
Posted in FairMail, India, Peru | No Comments »

FairMail closes its doors in India

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

Unfortunately FairMail founders Peter and Janneke had to take the very difficult decision to close FairMail India.

What happened?

Due to an old family feud between two families of different FairMail teenagers, an unprecedented amount of mutual anger and envy was unleashed in the hearts of these families when two teenagers had a serious complaint about one of our team members. The combination of wrong behaviour of the team member, accusations without proof and strong reactions to these accusations led to an actual police intervention.

Dangerous situation

We were shocked by the speed of the developments and how late we were informed by the other team members. When the police case started false rumours were spread about FairMail’s activities and the tension between the team members rose quickly. It has resulted in an unworkable and even dangerous situation for the team members and volunteer photography trainers of FairMail India and for us personally. This is evident due to the fact that the team member is currently in prison for over 10 weeks on accusations that are not properly investigated. We are doing the best we can to help him get a fair trial.

A great loss

The above forced us to the decision to stop all operations of FairMail in India as of the first of October 2014. This means that no new photos will be provided by the Indian teenagers. This is a great loss. Luckily we were able to come up with a solution in order to keep selling their cards and allowing the teenagers to keep investing in their education through the sale of their photographs. FairMail has signed a cooperation agreement with Asha Deep, a local school providing education to underprivileged children in Varanasi. Over the past years FairMail has cooperated with Asha Deep to recruit new FairMail teenagers and cooperate with them in guiding the teenagers. Currently 9 of the 10 FairMail teenagers are studying or have studied at Asha Deep school.

The least-worst solution

As of October 2014 Asha Deep will be responsible for providing the teenagers with their part of the FairMail earnings to invest in their education and providing the guidance in how they spend it. They will also collect the bills to justify these expenses so FairMail can keep guaranteeing that the teenagers’ money is spent on their education. Our former manager can keep his work and salary to support his family as he will help Asha Deep in the administration of the teenager’s funds. As he will also keep FairMail updated about the progress of the ex-FairMail teenagers we can keep you updated on how they are doing and investing their money.

What does this mean for the teenagers?

Despite the horrible past weeks we hope to be able to focus again on the goal we had in mind when FairMail started in India: give these teenagers the opportunity to follow their dreams and study what they really want. The numbers prove that most of the teenagers are on their way in achieving that. Since the beginning of FairMail India in 2009, 16 teenagers have earned over 45.000 euro to invest in their education. 56% of the teenagers are still in secondary school, 19% finished and kept on studying after that. Of the 4 teenagers who didn’t finish high school 2 teenagers used their FairMail earnings to start their own business. Of the 9 current FairMail teenagers (the other 7 already retired), 6 are preparing for their advanced education. Our estimate is that they will have enough funds to finish their higher education through their current savings, in combination with future earnings from their old photos which will still be sold. The 3 newer FairMail students might not earn enough money with their photos to finance a whole career as they do not have that many cards yet. But Asha Deep has offered to try to fulfil their educational needs through donations from their regular donors.

All in all a very sad chapter in the history of FairMail. We will of course evaluate on the lessons learnt and incorporate these in our strategy on how and where we can increase FairMail’s impact in the future.

Tags: India, results
Posted in FairMail, India | No Comments »

Turning garbage into school fees

Sunday, July 6th, 2014

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)

Tags: art, education, environment, garbage, teenagers
Posted in FairMail, India, Peru | No Comments »

Video report: “Temples and Beaches of Orissa”

Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

Taking pictures of local fishermen

The FairMail India team just returned from a wonderful 10 day photography trip to the “Temples and Beaches of Orissa”.

This video shows how the teenage photographers, travelling with foreign tourists, got inspired by local fishing villages, ancient Hindu temples and touching the sea for the first time. Taking great new pictures for FairMail’s new card collection coming soon!

Watch the cheerful 4 minute video here:

To learn more here about your opportunity to join on one of the next photography trips to any of these five destinations in Peru and India, click here.

Tags: India, orissa, photography travels
Posted in FairMail, India | No Comments »

The long road to get into an Indian university

Tuesday, March 18th, 2014

FairMail India photographer Sandhya preparing for her exams

The Indian FairMail teenagers are currently in the most important weeks of their school year: exam time. Especially for those in 10^th grade the exams are very important as their scores are decisive for being admitted into the university of their choice after 12^th grade. To an outsider the university admission system in India seems nearly impossible due to factors like the caste system, the amount of students and the pressure to succeed.

A chance of 1 in 1.000 to get in

In a country of 1.27 billion inhabitants (!) where more than half of the population is under 25 years old, just imagine the amount of students trying to get into university each year. Actually there are 20 million higher education enrolments per year in India. There simply aren’t enough seats to meet the educational demand. For one certain medical university there are more than 80.000 candidates for only 70 vacancies.

The lower your caste, the less intelligent you need to be to get in

Even though the caste system is officially abolished in India a significant number of seats are reserved for students from lower castes. Sometimes up to 50%. This entails that in the case that two FairMail teenagers (coming from similarly poor families) apply to enter medical school the FairMail teenager from higher caste needs to get higher marks to get in than his or her colleague from a lower caste.

Three of the FairMail teenagers with their tutor

Private tuition is the norm, even if you go to an expensive private school

Even though the oldest FairMail teenagers can now afford a more expensive private school they still need to spend time and money on private tuition after classes. Private tuition is the norm, even if you go to the most expensive private schools.

Pressure to succeed leads to high suicide rate

All the factors above lead, amongst others, to suicide being the second-leading cause of death in the 15-29 age group in India. One Indian sociologist explains that “A civilisation which was not very familiar with symbols of wealth and celebrated simplicity in lifestyle became, in the course of a generation, obsessed with upward mobility. This led to the cult of success which puts big pressure on Indian students wanting to get ahead in life.” That is why we discuss plan B with our students in case their dreams turn out too high fetched.

FairMail India photographer Kaushal preparing for his exams

Do yo have any good wishes for the teenagers during their exams?

Please leave them here below and we will be sure to pass them on to them in time!

Tags: education, teenagers
Posted in FairMail, India | No Comments »

New video profile of FairMail teenagers

Tuesday, March 18th, 2014

New on FairMail’s website are the personal video profiles of our teenage photographers in which they introduce themselves and talk about their aspirations.

The videos can be found on each teenagers personal profile page, like this one of 16 year old Aradhana from India.

Here, besides watching the videos, you can also read about their earnings, what they have spent their money on so far, send them an email, connect to their facebook, view their pictures and of course buy their cards!

It has never been easier to be in touch with your fair trade producer, this way giving FairMail’s social impact 50 faces!

Tags: India, Peru, Photographers, video
Posted in FairMail, India, Peru | No Comments »

FairMail’s new challenge

Monday, February 3rd, 2014

4 new FairMail co-managers

Besides being a social enterprise where teenagers earn money while learning, we have decided to expand the scope of our social impact to some of the retired ex-photographers, who leave the company at the age of 19. As of January 2014, both in Peru and India, FairMail’s daily management is in the hands of ex-photographers who have shown the desire and ability to grow professionally. A huge step for them to accept this new challenge and responsibility. And a huge challenge for us to decide to invest in training new managers internally instead of recruiting externally as FairMail did so far.

FairMail’s new policy to recruit new managers amongst the ex-teenagers has four big advantages:

Firstly it will help the selected ex-teenagers to grow professionally. For example in Peru the new managers are studying human resource management and to become a teacher. For both fields they will be able to practice part-time in FairMail what they learn at university in the meantime.

Secondly the new managers will be inspiring examples for the current teenagers of what you can achieve in life by working hard and being creative and responsible, even if you come from a difficult background.

Thirdly by working only with ex-teenagers we are sure to have managers on board who fully understand the essence of FairMail’s philosophy and who are happy to be able to give back to the organisation that helped them improve their lives.

Last but not least the money paid in wages by FairMail now ends up in the pockets of ex-teenagers who still really need the money. This way they are able to contribute directly to their family income or invest even more in their own education.

Apart from these four advantages our new policy also has risks. We have chosen to work with staff that has hardly any management experience. Running a business is a totally new experience for them which means a lot of time and effort has to be put in training them on the job. FairMail founders Peter and Janneke will be spending more of their time in Peru and India this year to give that training and guidance.

Read more about our new Peruvian managers Mariaflor Alvarado Reyes (22) and Yuli Silva Acuna (19) here.

And more about our new Indian managers Dhiraj Kannaujia (21) and Anil Rao (17) here.

Tags: anil rao, Dhiraj, India, maria_flor, Peru, teenagers, yuli
Posted in FairMail, India, Peru | No Comments »

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