Sadako Sasaki was a young 12 year old girl when she passed away of leukaemia, caused by radiation exposure as a result of an atom bomb at the end of World War II. Before her death Sasaki, according to Japanese culture, started to fold paper cranes. Legend is that if one folds 1000 paper cranes, a wish is granted and Sasaki wished for freedom from her illness. Hers is not the only story, it is shared by thousands of children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many suffered and died at the time of the bombings and in the decades that followed. While it was Sadako who became iconic, it was all the children and their dreams of a peaceful planet in their hearts that started the paper crane movement.
Hearing this story some of the IFP students including myself decided we would organize a peace crane project on UWC day to build and inspire peace in our community. Our goal was to have students fold a total 1000 peace cranes with the wish for peace. So we started planning; we bought the material, organized who would assume what role and when it would be.
On UWC day during lunch we set up a stand in the plaza at school where students and teachers could come and learn how to fold a peace crane. These were then strung on to strings that hung from the tent. For the 2 hours the strand was open it was surrounded by students all wanting to make a crane.
This activity really inspired everyone who made a crane. The whole community was working together to reach a common goal. Most individuals that participated felt proud to have been able to contribute to this action.
I had never led an activity like this and I am glad that I had the opportunity to because it showed me how a simple activity like folding cranes can build peace and unite a community. Knowing that what we ,the organizing team, had put together was the reason for all the smiling children who were so proud of themselves for having contributed to the peace crane project by making their very own crane felt very satisfying.
Things that we could have done to make this project better would have been advertise it more. We made posters explaining what the project was about and trying to attract people’s attention but we put them up too late. Even if massive crowds of people wanted to make a crane fe of them knew why they were making it until we told them. If we would have stuck up the posters earlier people would have already come to make a crane with the mindset of achieving peace in our community.
The biggest takeaway for me from organizing this activity would be realizing how it does not take a hero or a huge action to build peace, anybody can do it. Even if we are constantly told this at IFP I had never experienced it myself. For the first time I felt like I was actually actively contributing to creating peace and it was an eye-opening experience.
