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Schools

Kids Collect and Fold to Help Japanese Earthquake Victims

Students at El Marino Language School are pulling together to help.

With a third of the students at El Marino Language School enrolled in the Japanese immersion program, changing their community service project to collecting money to help victims of the recent 8.9 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, seemed like an obvious choice.

"We always do a community drive," said Lena Johnson, age 10. The fifth grader is vice president of the K-5 school's student council.

She said that teacher Alice Horiba called an emergency meeting of the council right after the earthquake, and even though that year's service project had just begun, the students unanimously voted to switch projects.

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"Everybody voted to do that instead of something else," Johnson said about the vote.

"We are [excited] because it's not every year there's an earthquake," said Pavan Tauh, an 11-year-old fifth grader who is president of the council.

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He explained that with half of his classmates being of Japanese descent, and many having family in Japan, the kids feel extra close to the disaster. In fact, when Tauh went to the second grade class he represents to tell them about the project, the kids were quick to start contributing, with one child putting in $20.

The students, often along with their families, are also folding origami cranes.

"I think they're supposed to bring them luck and I think they're very pretty," said Sally Finnan, who is 8. She's made around 30 or 40.

"We need about a thousand," said Walter Kowalewski, age 9.

Tauh explained that there's a tradition in Japan that if you fold a thousand cranes, you can request a wish from the gods, and sometime soon after World War II, a young woman had gotten leukemia and began folding cranes in hopes of a cure.

"She died at 840," Tauh said. "So other people in Japan finished the cranes, so it's become a tradition to make paper cranes in Japan."

The cranes, along with the money, will be sent to Japan with a banner wishing the Japanese people well.

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