An extraordinary message of love, hope to Japan

A popular Japanese story has it that the one that succeeds in creating a thousand origami cranes will have a wish granted by the Almighty.

Sadako Sasaki, a 12-year-old victim of the 1945 Hiroshima nuclear bombing in Japan, had an innocent wish in her last days -- she wanted to make a thousand origami cranes so that her wish to live would be granted. She could make only 644 such cranes in her nursing home as she succumbed to leukemia.

However, she was destined to inspire kids and adults from across the globe, who sent her cranes with messages of love, peace, prayers and hope.

Decades later, Tara Trust, an NGO from Goa, taking inspiration from the story of Sadako Sasaki, has launched The 1000 Crane Project, where it attempts to get underprivileged kids from Goa and other cities of India to paint 1,000 T-shirts depicting cranes.

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These T-shirts would eventually make its way to Fukushima to the young victims of the catastrophic earthquakes and tsunami in 2010, thereby spreading the message of compassion.

The project which was initiated in Delhi last year, concluded its Mumbai tour on Sunday. Five children from Goa coming from marginalised sections of the society traveled to be in Mumbai to be a part of this ten day workshop and stayed at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, where they were joined by five other kids from an NGO called Voice from Borivali, Mumbai.

"The 1000 Crane Project is a unique art exchange program that aims at giving underprivileged children from one city an opportunity to be able to interact with children in another city in order to help them imbibe a sense of togetherness and teamwork," said Juhi Pandey, project coordinator, Tara Trust.

"We use art as a developmental tool throughout. We want the children to experience a new world shown to them by their equivalents living in a different place," she added.

The first day of the project was marked by narrating the story of Sadako Sasaki, to sensitise the children about the hazards of nuclear disasters and the need for environment sustenance. Post this, the kids were asked to make origami cranes and paint cranes on T-shirts for their Japanese counterparts.

Kiran, a 12-year-old boy from Goa exclaimed showing a T-shirt that he had painted, "Crane is a bird that migrates to different countries, we also want our painted cranes to travel to Japan to say hello to a few children there." Kiran's T-shirt had a huge pink crane and also read 'I Love Japan'.

During the course of the workshop, these children were exposed to art forms like painting, clay work, puppet making, waste recycling, creative writing, theatre and music where experts were called in to conduct the sessions.

Not just this, the kids were taken for a 'Mumbai Darshan' where they learnt more about the city from their Mumbai friends that they stayed with.

Rizvaana, an 11-year-old girl participant from the Mumbai NGO Voice said, "We showed them the Gateway of India, museum, Chowpatty beach, Rajabai Tower, Mani Bhavan and Marine Drive. They have promised us to show places in Goa next."

The artworks created by the kids were put on display at TISS on the last day of the project. While parents from neighbouring areas brought their children to take a look at these origami cranes, painted T-shirts, clay idols, cloth puppets, wind chimes and creations out of waste texti#8804 the ten kids painted bold strokes on a 10feet x 5 feet canvas, that was meant to be gifted to TISS as a token of gratitude and love.

After Delhi and Mumbai, The 1000 Crane Project will head to Ahmedabad with a new set of children from Goa. The project aims at completing the painting of the 1000 T-shirts before the end of the year so these can be sent to Fukushima as a New Year's gift.