Sesame’s Newest Outreach Initiative: Helping Children Build Resilience
Helping children persevere through changes and transitions is a critical part of Sesame Street’s mission. That’s why Sesame Workshop, the educational non-profit behind the iconic children’s show, is proud to announce Little Children, Big Challenges, a new outreach initiative dedicated to building skills for resilience in children ages 2–5 to help them persevere through day-to-day as well as more difficult challenges.
Learning from mistakes; making new friends; resolving conflicts: these are the kinds of early childhood struggles with which Little Children, Big Challenges will help young kids cope. The initiative will help children from every background, including those of military and veteran families, remain resilient while working through these and other challenges.
The bilingual (English/Spanish) initiative will feature online, interactive resources for parents and children, as well as the “What We Are” anthem, which you can watch above. The anthem will be performed live by the Quantico Marine Corps band, Sesame Street’s Gordon, Elmo and Rosita, and Matt Rogers, the host of Lifetime’s Coming Home, at a special event aboard the Intrepid this Saturday, May 26.
Major support for Little Children Big Challenges is provided by BAE Systems, Inc. Generous support is provided by The Prudential Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the USO, and Military Child Education Coalition.
Watch Sesame Workshop’s Panel on Military Families
Click here to download the Military Families Highlights Video
For years Sesame Workshop has been working to better the lives of military families. We’re excited to present research and analysis which demonstrates just how effective our military families initiative has been. At a panel moderated by Bob and Lee Woodruff, both widely respected journalists and founders of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, Sesame Workshop unveiled the findings of a report by the Military Families Research Institute, Russell Research and the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Uniformed Service University of the Health Science, on the ways in which Sesame Workshop’s outreach efforts have helped military families persevere through the challenging transitions that accompany military life.
The panel included an esteemed group of experts: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey; Charles E. Milam, Principal Director for Military Community and Family Policy, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Patty Shinseki, Board Member of the Military Child Education Coalition and advisor for Joining Forces, a White House initiative that brings attention to the needs and sacrifices of veterans, service members, military families and their children; Dr. Stephen Cozza, Colonel USA (ret.), Associate Director, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Uniformed Services University of the Health Science; Dr. Jeanette Betancourt, Senior Vice President Outreach and Educational Practices at Sesame Workshop; Dr. Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, Professor and Director, Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University; and Major Nico Marcolongo, USMC (ret.), Program Manager, Challenged Athletes Foundation Operation Rebound.
The panel was on Wednesday, April 18. You can watch highlights from the event above.
Helping Military Families Heal: A Conversation with Lee Woodruff
Lee Woodruff and her husband Bob, who was injured in Iraq by a roadside bomb in 2006.
Lee Woodruff is the co-founder of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, the mission of which is to provide resources and support to injured service members, veterans and their families. For years Lee, her husband Bob Woodruff and Sesame Workshop have worked together to help military families stay strong as they experience the many challenging transitions that accompany military service. On Wednesday, April 18, Lee and her husband will be moderating a Sesame Workshop panel on military families which will include such esteemed guests as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and Patty Shinseki, board member of the Military Child Education Coalition and advisor for Joining Forces, a White House initiative that brings attention to the needs and sacrifices of veterans, service members, military families and their children, and encourages action to provide broad-based American support to them.
Sesame Workshop: Tell me about the Bob Woodruff Foundation and the particular way it goes about bettering the lives of service-members and their families.
Service is More than a Word: Sesame’s Carmen Osbahr on Military Families
Carmen Osbahr is a performer on Sesame Street. She is best known for her performance of Rosita, a Spanish-speaking monster who has appeared on Sesame Street since 1991. In addition to her work on the show, Carmen plays a major role in Sesame Workshop’s military families initiative. She and Kevin Clash, who performs Elmo, perform for the children of military families at USO shows both in the United States and abroad, making up just one part of the work we do with the USO. We recently sat down with Carmen to learn more about the work she does with the USO and how working with military families became so important to her.
To learn more about the work Sesame Workshop does with military families, click here.
Sesame Workshop: You recently came back from a USO tour. Tell me a bit about the work you’ve done with the USO in the past.
Carmen Osbahr: That was our second tour. The first one was in 2010. At the end of the year we went to Germany, where the USO took us to two military bases. It worked out so well that this time they took us to Guam and Hawaii. It was really cool.
USO and Sesame Street Launch New Military Families Tour
The longest running tour in the history of the USO hit the road again this week when the Sesame Street/USO Experience for Military Families kicked off its latest adventure at the Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. Between now and November the tour will stop at 65 military installations around the country and put on more than 235 shows. The tour features Elmo, Rosita, Cookie Monster, Grover, Honker and Katie, a new character created specifically for the tour to help children of military families deal with the challenges of relocation. Get a closer look at the fun everyone had at the tour’s inaugural show by clicking through the photos below. And be sure to stop back by SesameWorkshop.org throughout April, month of the military child, to learn more about the way our organization supports the families of the brave men and women who serve our country.
The Electric Company and Sesame Street Present: Military Families Near and Far
On November 5th, Sesame Workshop launched a new collection of resources for military families at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. Families who attended the celebration on Nov. 5 were greeted by Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall Commander, Colonel Carl R. Coffman, Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Principal Director of Military Community and Family Policy, Charles Milam, Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury Director, Navy Captain Paul S. Hammer, and Sesame Workshop president and CEO, H. Melvin Ming. Families experienced interactive performances by Sesame Street and Electric Company characters, explored the Military Families Near and Far website and the free Feel Electric! mobile app; as well as participated in other family fun activities. In addition, families saw the debut of the new “Let It Out” music video, which further supports self-expression and feelings vocabulary.
The new initiative was created in cooperation with the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. The goal of these resources are to extend the reach and effectiveness of the already existing program. This includes a bilingual website with information designed to connect families to one another and provide information to how to deal with the unique problems facing military families. In addition, Sesame Workshop is especially excited about FeelElectirc! a mobile app that encourages children to explore and express their emotions.
To date, Sesame Street’s military families initiative has provided significant resources for military families with preschool children experiencing the effects of deployments, when a parent returns home changed because of a combat-related injury and coping with the death of a loved one. With the help of The Electric Company, this new phase expands efforts to reach elementary school kids, 6 to 9 years old, find the right words to express their emotions as they experience difficult military transitions.
“Sesame Street and The Electric Company are thrilled to introduce Military Families Near and Far, which expands our Military Families Initiative to elementary school children and their parents,” said H. Melvin Ming, president and CEO of Sesame Workshop. “During this month of the military family, I can’t think of a better way to renew our commitment to military families and to let them know we care and are here to help.”
For more information, see the full press release here.
