Girls turn heartache into a positive cause

When Hu Li-ting, a native English-speaking teacher of Holy Angels Canossian School in Hung Hom, spotted an anonymous message on the wall outside the classroom, she was very moved.

The message, in broken English, said: 'Miss Hu, Japan the people are very hurt.' It was left on the Creative Wall outside a classroom after the magnitude-9 earthquake struck Japan in March, leaving thousands dead or missing.

It was at that moment the American teacher realised she must do something with the students to help the earthquake victims.

Hu found the girl who left the message, Cherie Lo Sum-wai, and with some other students, they decided to launch a school campaign to collect new socks for the victims and to make origami cranes with handwritten messages of support. The teacher left boxes of paper around the school for pupils in different classes to fold their cranes and write messages.

After just one week, the students had folded 2,064 paper cranes and collected 104 pairs of socks.

Ten-year-old Cherie said she left the message on the wall because she sympathised with the Japanese victims after seeing earthquake images on television.