Mary Hahn, seventh grade teacher at Nativity of Our Savior Catholic School, came across a project from OshKosh B'gosh involving paper cranes. For every paper crane that was made and sent into OshKosh B'gosh, cranes being symbolic of long life in Japan, they would send one article of clothing, up to 50,000, to the children in the tsunami stricken area in Japan. Thinking it would be a great service project for the school children, and a benefit to the children of Japan both materially and psychologically, Mary decided to embark on this project.
Contacting the OshKosh B'gosh store in Michigan City, Mary received enough cranes for the entire school. The students colored the cranes and put their first name and hometown on each crane. Then the kids punched out each crane and assembled them. "That was the other thing I thought was so neat about this project," stated Hahn, "The students could actually do the project themselves."
Each Nativity student in the entire school made a crane, even the pre-school students, for a total of 186 cranes. By the time the contest was over, OshKosh B'gosh had received 2,000,000 cranes so they increased their clothing donation to 80,000 items for a cost of 1.5 million dollars worth of clothing going to children in Japan.