Origami Whiz Kid
Last Friday, staff from many POET locations gathered via Zoom for an origami folding party. Participants folded cranes and swans and wrote messages of hope on the birds for CHS’s Join the Fold campaign.
Kara Jones holds a special place in her heart for creating origami. As a child, she found magic in a simple sheet of paper and with a few folds anything could become a swan, a frog, or any 3-D animal.
“As a kid, having the ability to take a flat piece of paper and turn it into anything that you can imagine, was something that I loved about origami,” Jones said.
At the age of six, she was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While attending the Sioux Falls Challenge Center, she needed something to do with her hands to help her focus—and folding paper became her creative outlet.
“If I was bored in class, I could sit and fold. I’d essentially have a menagerie by the end of a class period,” said Jones. “Origami was my creative outlet, and I listened better to my teachers while folding. I still remember the joy of finding a beautiful sheet of paper and making a perfectly folded piece that was difficult, and being able to say, ‘Yeah, I made that.’”
Now a Senior Buyer Category Manager at POET, Jones was recently searching for an art installation in Sioux Falls for a coworker. She came across Children’s Home Society’s award-winning Join the Fold campaign—an origami art project designed to get community members to fold swans and cranes that will be installed at each CHS campus. Jones became interested in the project and even though she traded in her beautiful paper for a 3-D printer, she knew she had to host a folding party.
She asked her immediate team at POET if they would be interested in joining her. “They were like, ‘Not a clue how to do it, but teach us, and we'll fold!’” she said.
She then approached POET’s Communication Director, who suggested expanding the folding party to other POET locations. The idea spread quickly and within 72 hours, dozens of employees signed up to take part in the folding event. Employees at other sites participated through Zoom. Staff could fold cranes and swans at home or write messages of hope on paper and mail them back if they were not comfortable folding.
“It was exciting to see so many different people participating and supporting CHS and this cool art project,” said Jones.
If you are interested in hosting your own Join the Fold folding party, learn more here.
Along with leading the folding sessions at POET,
Jones is finding new ways to bring origami to life.
Recently, she's been experimenting with a 3-D
printer to create origami birds.
