Inspired by a popular children's story, students at Wild Rose Elementary School are making and selling paper cranes in an effort to raise money for Canadian Red Cross relief efforts in Japan.
A devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11 has claimed thousands of lives in the Asian country.
The idea to make cranes came to assistant principal Jeff Birdsell while he was driving to work one day.
"I was listening to CBC on the way to school and they mentioned that the origami club at the University of Alberta and a service group called Circle K had begun their own initiative to make paper cranes and they were going to sell them for donations," Birdsell recalled.
Several months earlier, his students had read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by American author Eleanor Coerr.
The story is about Sadako Sasaki, a young girl living in Hiroshima when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city during the Second World War. As a result of the radiation, Sadako develops leukemia.
Inspired by a Japanese saying that one who makes one thousand paper cranes will be granted a wish, Sadako sets out to make one thousand paper cranes herself. She reaches 644 cranes before passing away. Her family and friends folded the remaining 356 paper cranes in her honour.
After reading the book, Birdsell said his students learned how to fold paper cranes.
When he heard about the initiative at the university, he decided to get his students involved by folding paper cranes and selling them for donations. Any money raised will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross.
"We had so much fun making them before so we thought that we would use them for a fundraiser," said Kyla Gentry, a Grade 6 student.
"We noticed that there has been a lot of damage. That [tsunami] was huge," she said.
Birdsell said any paper cranes not sold by the end of the week will be donated to the University of Alberta's paper crane initiative.
Hugs for a cause
After she heard about the earthquake in Japan on March 11, Jen Messenger, also a teacher at Wild Rose, immediately emailed a Canadian charter school in Tokyo asking what had happened.
"I got an immediate email back and they told us everything that happened, that they had to evacuate the school. The kids were all fine. Luckily no one was hurt in Tokyo," she said.
Messenger said students in her class are sewing "hugs," a type of scarf with hands on the end, to send to students in Japan.
"We're going to make one from each of our kids to send down there," Messenger said.
Each of her students will make an additional scarf to be auctioned off at the school in early April. Students will also be selling chocolate-covered strawberries next month with all proceeds going to the Red Cross.
Birdsell said he hopes the initiatives help students realize they can make a difference in other parts of the world.
"Things have changed. We're starting to think more globally than we used to, with access to information so I think all schools, ours included, we try to provide a service and we try to do it locally and nationally and internationally. This fits into the global service," he said.
"They certainly know what's going on. It's the school's job to help them put it in perspective."
