A Sense of Accomplishment

My school, altogether, has made 1,135 paper cranes to ship off to Amazon.com, from which they will donate $2 per crane or $2,270 to the Japan relief efforts. It’s not much as far as disaster relief costs, but it’s something to be proud of given we still have t-shirt sales to tally up. I made over 200 of those myself, and have made many more to sell to raise extra money, which has helped some I suppose.

            I’ve been asked why do I want to help, and I can’t come up with a direct answer. I have been interested in Japanese culture since Seventh grade and I have become involved with it. I hosted a girl from Japan last year from a group of 15 Japanese kids. We became good friends over the two weeks she stayed here, and I made many friends in that group. I’m going to Japan this year, which I’ve been saving for four years to do. I’m president of the Japanese club. I don’t know, because of this connection and simply because they need help, is why I want to help. I’ve helped raise money for Haiti and Breast Cancer Research too, and it’s mostly because they need help and I want to help out the world and my community. I like helping people, it makes me feel good about myself. Maybe that’s a little selfish, as Ayn Rand would say, but I think that if the results create something good then who cares how selfish it was?

Learn how to make a crane:
http://monkey.org/~aidan/origami/crane/