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The Million Crane Project is giving people across the country the chance to show support for Japan after the March 11 earthquake, and St. Thomas students are taking part.

Students from Princeton and Stanford universities started the campaign with the goal of collecting 1 million paper cranes by May 11 and generating enough publicity to increase fundraising.

According to the project’s website, the idea came from the Japanese legend that promises the granting of one wish after folding 1,000 cranes. The crane is Japan’s national bird and symbolizes longevity, strength and recovery.

St. Thomas graduate Sarah Churchill got St. Thomas involved in the project. Churchill said she grew up in Japan and that her mom, who lives in Princeton, N.J., told her about the project.

As an Office of International Student Services employee, Churchill said she first brought up the idea there and then got support from other offices such as the International Education Center.

These organizations set up four sessions to give students the opportunity to fold cranes and to receive lists of student organizations that use donations to aid Japan. Students can fold cranes from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, May 5, in the Murray-Herrick Center first-floor atrium.

During the first session last Tuesday, Churchill said, “We had 12 students or so who were folding the whole time and throughout the night there were 30.” The sessions last Friday and this Tuesday each attracted about 15 students, most of whom stayed the entire hour and a half, Churchill said.

Junior Taylor Heinlein said he came to fold cranes to earn service hours for Omicron Delta Kappa, a national leadership society.

“It was a good way to get some service in while learning a cool ‘trade’ in the process,” Heinlein said.

Heinlein said he will be back Thursday to fold more cranes because “any effort to help out the people suffering from the tragedy in Japan is worthwhile.”

Freshman Sue Yang said she had seen the crane-folding table before but always went past it. But while waiting to go to dinner with a friend, she decided to make some cranes.

When her friend Ramona da Silva, a sophomore, came, da Silva joined Yang at the table.

“We had made cranes before just for fun, so I just did it for [that],” Yang said.

Da Silva said she wanted to be able to contribute whatever she could. She also said the project is interesting and she hopes it is “able to bring awareness about the great tragedy.”

By Tuesday evening, the project’s website listed that 46,600 cranes had been collected.

“They’ve still got a long ways to go, but … a lot of schools are just doing it now,” Churchill said.

After St. Thomas is done collecting the cranes, Churchill said, the plan is to string together all the cranes and send them to Princeton. Once the organizers of the project have all the cranes, a team of artists will use them to create a piece of memorial art. Churchill said they will then send the cranes to Japan as a sign of support.

Freshman Katie Merle said, “It’s important to offer hope to Japan and let them know that we care about them, because we’re very fortunate to live in the situation that we do live in. We’re America. We should be helping all the other countries that we can.”

Rita Kovtun can be reached at kovt1547@stthomas.edu.