HIV / AIDS Awareness - Combining the Origami bird or crane with the red HIV AIDS Ribbon

In 1996, I came up with the idea of combining the origami crane with the AIDS Ribbon. As you can see, it is a concept that shows East Meets West. It also looks like a dove with the olive branch. I'm going to promote this concept again.

Two nurses, one from Australia and another one from South Africa, noticed the image online years later. I received separate emails from them, saying thanks for the idea. They both said that the children in their own respective warps had a field day making the cranes, attaching the red ribbon, making mobiles and suspending them in string or attaching them to the walls of their wards. I hope that they all survived that dreaded disease.

I had read that if you combine 2 familiar concepts, a new one will emerge. Because the separate ideas are familiar, the public will have the tendency to adapt the new concept.

One night I was in bed, and I stood up. I suddenly had this idea for AIDS Awareness. In Asia, there is a belief that if you fold 1,000 cranes, your wish will be granted. This was popularized by Sadako Sasaki, who was a survivor of the Hiroshima / Nagasaki atom bombs. She was two years old when Hiroshima was bombed, but she died at the age of 12 of leukemia in 1955. She folded the cranes with the wish to heal. You can read  more about her here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki

I got depressed and inspired that year, because several people I knew, most of whom were around my age, died of HIV/AIDS. I felt that I should go public with this idea of the HIV / AIDS Crane, so I went ahead and made this public. I was already writing for a local community free paper, I had a column that featured people in the art field. Getting in the local news myself was like a flipping over, since I was used to featuring others.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO USE THE IMAGES FOR YOUR OWN HIV/AIDS AWARENESS CAMPAIGN.

You can make pins for yourself or your events too. Fold a crane, but don't unfold it.  Instead, mount the right wing to a safety pin, and paste the red ribbon to the left wing. Try using a white bond paper, make a square, and then divide that square into 4 smaller squares. This will give you 4 cranes per bond paper.