In ancient Japanese lore, the folder of 1,000 paper cranes is granted a wish such as luck, long life or recovery from an illness.
It's a story since popularized in Western culture by the true-life tale of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who died slowly of radiation-induced leukemia after an atomic bomb exploded over her home in Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.
By most accounts, Sasaki had folded only 644 cranes before succumbing to her illness but her gesture has since come to symbolize a wish for peace and healing all over the world.
And it's with that history in mind, as well as its parallels with the recent nuclear crisis in Japan, that students and staff at Coquitlam College have been folding away in their spare time, making delicate origami cranes to raise money for Japanese aid relief.
Still about a hundred cranes shy of the 1,000-mark by Wednesday afternoon, organizers said they were confident they would reach the lucky number by Friday.
Students and staff have been buying the cranes by donation for anywhere from $1 to $90 each, then writing messages on them and hanging them in the windows of the international school's foyer.
"God Bless Japan," reads language student Eunika Widjaja's crane.
"Rebuild soon," reads an unsigned one.
"I know your heart is broken and we are thinking and praying with you, for you," reads another.
Many students and faculty at Coquitlam College are from Japan and still have family near the tsunami- and radiation-affected areas, said Sonia Chhabra, the science and language instructor who spearheaded the project. Others without any connection to the suffering Japanese islands are also reaching out to help.
"A lot of the students at our school are Chinese mostly and, with their historical tensions [with Japan], it's really wonderful how they put all that aside and the students were so compassionate and really opened up their hearts and their wallets to donate this past week," Chhabra said.
So far, the crane project has raised more than $1,350 which will be donated directly to an aid organization through the Japanese Consulate in Vancouver.
"I only came here last year," said Widjaja, "but this is the first time we really did something as a school and it's really nice to see the school finally come together."
