To view pictures of the students making origami set to music, click here

Like many around the world, C.H. Norton Public School students and staff witnessed on television and the Internet images of the destruction of a deadly 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11. The Burlington school desperately wanted to do something to raise awareness for the need for supplies and other materials to help Japan recover in what will become a multi-year rebuilding effort.

To get the awareness started, a few members of Japanese Mothers of Burlington and Oakville visited the school for a morning to tell their personal stories of family and friends who are trying to recover from the earthquake and tsunami. Also, they came to teach students how to build special colourful origami cranes. Origami is a traditional Japanese art if folding paper to make intricate paper forms. The best known design is the paper crane. In Japanese culture, it is believed when 1,000 cranes are created, wishes can come true. C.H. Norton will sell the cranes to the community for $1-$2, with the money raised going to the school’s fundraising efforts for Japan.

C.H. Norton is one of numerous schools in the Halton District School Board that are participating in a crane-building fundraising effort for Japan.

The students and staff enjoyed the experience as evidenced by the smiles while folding piece of paper after piece of paper. Grade 5 student Matthew says he learned students can find many ways to help out people in need.

“Every person in the world can make a difference,” he says.  

Principal Diane Johnstone says the school will build as many cranes as they can. The important part of the presentation was for kids to learn about empathy.

“Our motto is, ‘making a difference,’” she says.

Tomoko Begg of the Japanese Mothers of Burlington and Oakville says she hopes students learn, through her story and origami presentation, to have compassion for people around the world.

“We can do something even though we live far apart,” she says.