Student featured in Chinese film

Photo by Jeremiah Tucker / Sauk Prairie Eagle

Gao Luli films Sauk Prairie Middle School 7th grader Farit Kuri-Azamari for a Chinese documentary about a partnership with American schools and projects in China to save endangered species of cranes.

By Jeremiah Tucker, Sauk Prairie Eagle

Seconds before his interview was to begin, Farit Kuri-Azamar began to have second thoughts. Kuri-Azamar, a seventh grader at Sauk Prairie Middle School, was nervous.

He didn't seem to think it was such a big deal that he had drawn some pictures of birds as a fifth grader and that he and his classmates raised $800 for the International Crane Foundation selling those pictures on notecards.

Principal Ted Harter gave him a quick pep talk and urged him to go ahead with the interview. He agreed.  

Kuri-Azamar was being interviewed because the crane foundation gave the $800 his pictures raised to a school in Xianghai, China, a small town located on the edge of a wetland where cranes often stop during their migration.

The kids at the school in Xianghai used the money to buy art supplies and started an art program.

Joan Garland, the Education Outreach Coordinator for the crane foundation, said the Chinese students were inspired by Kuri-Azamar, and like him they drew pictures of cranes, which the crane foundation turned into notecards.

To date, Garland said the crane foundation has raised between $2,000 and $3,000 selling the notecards picturing the Chinese students' artwork.

Some of that money, Garland said, went to crane protection and some went back to the school.

Zhang Juan and Gao Luli from the non-profit Beijing Brooks Education Center, in partnership with the Internal Crane Foundation, wanted to film Kuri-Azamar as part of a documentary they were making about efforts between American schools and projects in China to save endangered cranes.

Garland said she hopes the documentary will be shown on Chinese television.

During the interview, Kuri-Azamar explained he visited the International Crane Foundation while he was in elementary school. Then encouraged by his art teacher, he drew some pictures of birds, which he and his classmates turned into a fundraiser.

Juan opened her laptop computer and showed Kuri-Azamar pictures of the students in China painting a large mural his fundraising helped make possible.

"Although you've never met these kids, they are doing activities from your activities," Juan said.

"That's really cool," Kuri-Azamar said.

Juan tried to get Kuri-Azamar to open up about the importance of his work to save the cranes and what he wanted to say to the students in China.

But, humble to the extreme, Kuri-Azamar referred to his work as "just pictures of birds," and he said he didn't understand how $800 could mean that much.

Then Garland explained to him that $800 might not be a lot of money here, but in China it allowed these students to start an entire art program.

Then Kuri-Azamar nodded and seemed to realize that perhaps he had achieved something worth being proud of.

"I forgot about the Chinese dollar," he said.