PEA Joins Million Crane Project to Build Awareness About Japan

March 31, 2011

Phelps Academy Center was full of chatting, enthusiastic students this week during Meetings and Faculty Meeting blocks, as it normally is. This week, however, many of them were intently focused on folding origami cranes.

PEA's Japan-America Society and Origami Club, supported by the Exeter Social Service Organization (ESSO) and Cranes for a Wish, invited students to fold cranes as part of the Million Crane Project. This project was launched by students at Princeton University and Stanford University to increase awareness in the U.S. about the situation facing Japan as it recovers from the earthquake of March 11.

The Million Crane Project website states: "The idea comes from the Japanese legend of 'senbazuru,' that promises to grant a wish to anybody who folds one thousand paper cranes."

PEA students have already folded over 350 cranes. The cranes will be sent to Princeton University, where they will join cranes from more than 35 other participating schools. The Million Crane Project hopes to have collected 1 million cranes by May 11, the 2-month anniversary of the earthquake.

Participants in the Million Crane Project may make a donation. Donations made at PEA will go to AmeriCares, an organization that seeks to deliver aid to "people in crisis around the world."

Learn more about the Million Crane Project...

See how Cranes for a Wish uses a "children helping children" model to provide support for children...

Find out how AmeriCares helps people in crisis...

— Nicole Pellaton