Design Production: Origami - Event

World Origami Days

Let's get the world to fold! Celebrate origami by spreading the joy of paperfolding during World Origami Days, held each year from October 24–November 11, a 2-1/2 week celebration of the international community of origami!. Help us make origami as visible as possible: teach a class, fold on the bus, give your friends origami, exhibit your models. The possibilities are limitless, just as with origami itself.

October 24 is the birthday of Lillian Oppenheimer (1898-1992), who founded the first origami group in America. She was also one of the founders of the British Origami Society and OrigamiUSA. A dynamic woman, she was delighted in the magic to be found in a piece of paper and wanted to share it with the world.

November 11 is Origami Day in Japan where the paper crane has become a symbol of peace.

http://origamiusa.org/node/716

Dedicated to Sadako, people all over Japan celebrate August 6 as the annual peace day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki

First Annual Sadako Peace Day
August 1996

Mayor Harriet Miller declared August 6, 1996 as "The First Annual Sadako Peace Day." In making this proclamation, she called "for efforts in our community and throughout the world to abolish nuclear weapons and to prevent people everywhere, particularly children, from suffering the horrors of war."

Sadako Sasaki was a two-year old girl in Hiroshima, who was exposed to radiation when the atomic bomb was dropped on her city on August 6, 1945. She developed radiation-induced leukemia ten years later. Japanese legend has it that one's wish will come true if one folds a thousand paper cranes. Sadako began folding paper cranes with the wish to get well and achieve world peace. She wrote a poem, "I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world." Sadako died with 646 cranes folded, and her classmates finished folding the paper cranes. Sadako's story has become known to people all over the world, and the folding of paper cranes has become a symbol of world peace.

To commemorate Sadako Peace Day, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria hosted an outdoor ceremony at Sadako Peace Garden at La Casa de Maria. The ceremony, with some 100 people in attendance, included a musical program arranged by Harry Sargous of The Music Academy of the West, and poetry read by several Santa Barbara poets, including Gene Knudsen Hoffman and Sojourner Kincaid-Rolle.

Foundation president David Krieger summarized the importance of the event and the day: "This day August 6th has many names. For some, looking back in history, it is Hiroshima Day, a time to recall the terrible devastation that took place when a single nuclear weapon was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. For some, looking to the future, it is Abolition Day, a time to rededicate one's efforts to the elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world. These are important perspectives. For us here today, the day is also Sadako Peace Day, a commemoration of the loss of an innocent child's life as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima, and a rededication to preventing other children from being injured and killed as a result of war, any war."

The featured speaker at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's 18th Annual Sadako Peace Day ceremony was Kikuko Otake, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the author of Masako's Story: Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima.

The event marked the 67th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by commemorating the life of Sadako Sasaki. Sadako was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and developed leukemia ten years later due to radiation from the bomb. Sadako attempted to bring about her wish for world peace by folding 1,000 paper cranes. The paper crane has become a global symbol of peace, and a statue of Sadako now stands in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

https://www.wagingpeace.org

I came across this video in my initial research but didn't blog it. Must of been fate

ICAN

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) aims to galvanize public and government support for multilateral negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention without further delay. Such a treaty would outlaw the production, testing, possession and use of nuclear weapons, and establish the mechanisms needed to eliminate them within an agreed timeframe. Already, a majority of nations support this plan, as do a majority of the world’s people. But we need your help to make it a reality.

http://www.icanw.org/overview

Folding cranes for peace previous efforts/inspiration etc:

http://www.thousandcranes.net/