Two six-year-olds from Nashua, NH are showing that you are never too young to make change! Nina and Agastya Mahalingam, both first graders at The World Schools in Nashua, began hosting “Wish Upon a Crane” events to make wishes come true for their Japanese peers by folding paper cranes. These events involved folding paper cranes and finding a sponsor for each crane at $1 each.

“Anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish,” said 6-year-old Agastya Mahalingam.

“We want to fold hundreds of thousands of paper cranes and make wishes come true,” added 6-year-old Nina Mahalingam.

Both kids are part of an unique international youth-led non-profit Lil’ MDGs. The kids learned about the “Paper Cranes for Japan” project when Lil’ MDGs was contacted by DoSomething.org. The kids decided to join DoSomething.org's campaign and mail the cranes they fold during their “Wish Upon a Crane” events to Students Rebuild. By reaching out to Lil’ MDGs youth base in 41 countries, the two have successfully galvanized youth to fold over 9,000 paper cranes, thereby making nine wishes come true so far. More than 70 youth from three New England states came together to fold almost 4,000 of these paper cranes. Kids from India, Indonesia, SriLanka, and Haiti who have experienced firsthand the impact of natural disasters have folded thousands of these cranes and mailed them to Students Rebuild.

What’s next? After realizing that their cranes have raised $18,000 so far, both kids jointly exclaim, “We want to make 100 wishes come true!”

To show how serious they are, they partnered with the local malls to hold mall-wide events for the whole community to have a chance to help on April 2, 2011. It was an awesome event with more than 100+ kids and 321 cranes made by them in about two hours. Nina and Agastya also raised $137 in additional donations for Architecture for Humanity.

View more photos from these events on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=287541&id=639172710&l=ca6634d156

Submitted by Kristen McDonalds on behalf of Dylan Mahalingam, Lil' MDGs, March 30, 2011