South Pasadena High School student and Girl Scout, Quincy Sakai, is currently working on her Gold Award by doing a sustainable community service project. She recently completed a mural at Maya Salon on Mission Street where she invited community members to participate in adding to it

The Cranes for a Change project started out as a way to share cultural appreciation and discovery. The project’s founder, Sakai, noticed that many of her fellow students, including herself, had felt disconnected from their ethnic backgrounds due to a lack of opportunity to explore their cultural roots in the community.

With many of her peers coming from multi-generational families, she says it’s easy for them to feel “Americanized” and struggle with the role of culture in their lives. As a Japanese-American who never learned Japanese, Sakai often felt stranded from a secure sense of self-identity that many others seemed to have.

However, throughout middle school, she soon learned that there were others who felt similarly, and were embarrassed because they didn’t have ways to participate in their culture. Using the power of symbolism, Sakai aims to allow others to connect to her culture as well as encourage them to discover their own.

Activities that have furthered this mission are monthly origami club meetings at the South Pasadena Library, where Sakai teaches children different origami figures and the symbolism behind them; and painting a community mural at the Maya Salon. The mural depicts peonies, which are believed to symbolize bravery and honor in Japanese culture, along with origami cranes floating about the painting, which were painted on by members of the South Pasadena community. Ultimately, the mural not only shows the beauty and culture that can be created when the community works together but also serves as a way to honor a person’s own background. This mural was showcased to the public on June 24 and of course lives permanently at Maya Salon. To follow the project more closely. check out @cranesforachange on Instagram.

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