Students send peace message to Far East
STUDENTS at Hopwood Hall College have joined an international project which has seen them form penpal relationships with Japanese students.
ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students at Hopwood Hall College have joined an innovative international peace project with Kobe Ryukoku High School in Japan.
Since the beginning of January, the students, who come from different backgrounds across the world, have learned how to make origami hearts, doves and cranes to send to their new friends in Japan.
Hopwood Hall’s ESOL students also received personalised messages of peace from the students in Japan, along with accompanying pictures and biographies.
They’re now well underway with writing their own letters in response to their Kobe Ryukoku counterparts.
The idea came from the Peace Crane Project, a global project that invites every child in the world to fold an origami crane, write messages of peace on its wings, then trade their crane with another child somewhere else in the world.
Inspiration for the Peace Crane Project came from the story of
Sadako Sasaki - Sadako was two years old when a bomb was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima at the end of WWII.
During ill health, Sadako tried to fold 1,000 origami cranes in the hope that her wish of beating the illness would come true.
An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the gods.
Sadly, she passed away and so her classmates continued to make them as a way to remember her - in turn this later made the act of crane folding a symbol of peace around the world.
In Japan, paper cranes are a symbol of peace, and are often seen at places like war memorials or atomic bomb memorials.
On top of making the origami cranes and sending peace letters, the students have now developed penpal relationships with the Japanese students and regularly write to each other.
Many of the messages have been displayed on a “peace wall” and peace tree at the college’s Rochdale campus.
ESOL’s Student Support Tutor, Eloise Dale, started the project at Hopwood Hall College and described her pride in her students contributions.
She said: “The students have really enjoyed the project and have now formed a friendship with somebody on the other side of the world.
“Their letters have talked about what their vision of peace is and there has been some very profound and well thought out ideas about peace - it’s allowed our students to discuss the topic in more detail.
“Although their lives are very different and they are 6000 miles apart, their hopes and wishes of living in a peaceful world are the same.”