Creve Coeur Area School Children Take Action To Help Japanese Disaster Victims

A group of fourth grade students at Craig Elementary school just outside Creve Coeur are drawing inspiration from one girl's story of tragedy nearly 50 years ago in hopes of making a difference today.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, tells the story of Sadako Sasaki, an 11 year-old Japanese girl who developed leukemia and died 9 years after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on her hometown of Hiroshima to help end World War II. Sadako hoped to have her wish for good health granted if she could make 1,000 origami cranes. She could only make it to 644 before her death. According to the story, her friends finished the rest so she could be buried with them.

Now, students at Craig Elementary hope to make their own thousand cranes and sell them in hopes of raising money for American Red Cross relief efforts designed to help victims from the Japanese calamity of earthquakes, tsunamis and the resulting concerns at nuclear power facilities in the country.

The students had just finished a unit on origami and cultures of the world, and Daniel Sample said they came to him and wanted to discuss Sadako. "Those important things in the world are important to talk about and to address and to help any way we can because we would want that for ourselves as well," Sample said, adding that the decision to talk about what was going on in the world--heady topics for kids between the ages of 8-10--was easier because they came to him.

"I've been watching the news, I've been seeing how bad the tsunamis were and how bad the earthquake was," Kedar Venkatesh said. "I felt really, really bad. so I'm so happy that I'm helping Japan." His classmate Graham Hampton realized he could relate to people his own age thousands of miles away. "Their schools were probably destroyed so they can't learn." He added: "I think its cool because we're helping people by doing something we like to do so its helping everybody." 

Students are busy making the cranes and the posters to support their cause. $1 per crane, although some larger cranes will hopefully garner a larger donation.

Jessica Goldberg said the experience has taught her not to be afraid to do something to help others, while Varun Shenoy may have summed it up best. "I hope that they could rebuild their community and they could live a better life," he said.