MANILA, Philippines—My 7-year-old son, Gabby, and I started this project of creating 1,000 origami cranes on March 15. Gabby has always loved origami but, after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I taught him about the peace crane and its significance in Japanese culture.
Upon completing our first crane, he insisted on making a video and asked me to put it on Facebook to let others know that we still needed to make 999 more.
I started a blog, got both my kids involved (including 14-year-old Enzo), and asked friends (old friends from UP Diliman, neighbors in Pasig, and office mates at GMA New Media) to get their kids involved.
Empathy
I just thought the recent disaster in Japan was an opportunity to teach children not just about disaster preparedness but also empathy and what it means to be a citizen of the world.
I was actually pleasantly surprised that some of the kids already knew about the peace crane. One girl from our neighborhood even knew about the story of Sadako Sasaki.
Our initial plan was to make this a summer-long project and then eventually turn over the cranes to the cultural office of the Japanese embassy. However, upon learning about the arrival of the Peace Boat from an article that came out in the Inquirer, we have decided to step up our efforts as we have only completed over 200 to date.
We hope to be able to complete the cranes by next week and so we can grab the opportunity to turn these over to the Peace Boat.
Hopefully, the Peace Boat crew will be able to bring the peace cranes to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (where peace cranes are traditionally brought), as part of our contribution to the prayer for world peace and as a sign of goodwill for the children of Japan.