Wishing Crane, a new club dedicated to folding and donating origami to hospitals has just begun their first year operating at Clements. Wishing Crane’s next meeting is Nov. 1 in club sponsor Richard Gagne’s room (1325). 

“The Houston chapter has been active since June, and the Clements chapter has been active since August,” junior and president Abhiramee Aurunathan said.

Despite only starting up this year, they have received a large number of cranes that are ready to be donated.

“So far, we have gotten maybe like 800 cranes donated from people around the school and that we’ve made ourselves over the summer, and people outside of Clements, like people in the Houston area, have donated to us too,” Aurunathan said.

Although they don’t have a specific number of cranes they hope to donate this year, they want to work hard to make as many as possible to cheer up patients.

“We hope to at least reach a thousand and reach the Japanese thousand cranes to wish someone good luck,” junior and vice president Lillian Yang said.

Since school started in August, the club has been working hard to partner with a hospital to get the cranes donated and set up big events.

“There will be donation drives and we’re setting up something with Brooksville Nursing Homes to teach people to make cranes and hearts,” Aurunathan said. “Later, when we get enough funding, we’re going to make craft kits, with origami paper and like other small crafts patients can do in the hospital.”

Besides making cranes, they have a lot of other arts and crafts opportunities, though the majority revolve around origami.

“Aside from cranes, you can also make paper flowers which we will be teaching,” Yang said. “We’ll make lily pad flowers, lily flowers, and we also have little gadgets we can make. We’ll also be making goodie bags.”

Right now, the club is focusing on getting YES to accept their hours, so there may be changes in how many cranes you need to fold and the guidelines you need to follow in order to get the volunteer hours. For now, you can get one hour for every 25 cranes folded.

“The requirements for cranes are that they are folded on 6” by 6” paper,” Aurunathan said. “Another requirement is that they have a certain required guideline notes on them. We have set stuff you can write or you can make your own based on what we’ve written.”

Their sponsor, AP World History and AP European History teacher Richard Gagne expresses excitement for the future of the club.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the totality and the final product of what the kids make with the cranes,” Gagne said.