The theme this year was “Be Healthy, Be Active, Be You!” The day was focused on ways families could eat healthy and stay physically active, a cause to which both the first lady Michelle Obama and Sesame Workshop are dedicated.

To learn more about the White House’s Easter Egg Roll, click here. To learn more about Sesame Workshop’s commitment to encourage healthy living habits in our children, click here.

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Luckily Sesame Street’s Abby Cadabby and her friend Rocio Galarza, Senior Director of Outreach and Content Design for Sesame Workshop, are here to help. On Wednesday, February 20, Abby and Rocio will be taking questions about divorce and separation from parents, children, friends and anyone who has questions about staying resilient while navigating a divorce or separation.

Email us at divorce@sesame.org and Abby and Rocio will record an answer to your question in a video segment that will be posted online next week. In addition to your question, please include your name, age (if you wish) and your hometown so we can give say hello if your question is picked. We will also write you back directly if Abby and Rocio have the opportunity to answer your question.

Let your friends, family and colleagues know too! Everyone is welcome to send in a question. We can’t wait to hear from you.

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Millions of young children experience divorce, and they struggle to understand what exactly is happening. Parents also struggle to explain these changes, if they are able to open up to their children about the subject at all. That’s why Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce provides resources featuring our beloved Sesame Street Muppets that give divorced parents strategies on how to communicate with and support their children. The videos, which are for targeted audiences struggling with divorce, will not air on the Sesame Street television series.

As with everything we do, Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce is based on thorough research. Given the sensitive nature of the subject, we have taken extra care to approach the topic in a way that will be supportive of children and not confusing or scary. However, the research doesn’t do the job all by itself. A major reason our educational tools are so effective is because our wonderful Muppets bring the story to life.

Sesame Street writer Christine Ferraro wrote the script for our video materials starring Abby Cadabby, Elmo and Rosita, and spoke about the difficulties of writing stories about such a sensitive topic.

“We never want to go too into detail with any of these,” Ferraro said, “because every kid’s situation is different. Every divorce is different and every family’s situation is different. We want to keep it a little bit ambiguous so it’s applicable to all children, but it’s also Abby’s story. Abby is talking about the fact that her parents are divorced. She’s already at a place where she has accepted it, and that made a big difference emotionally.

“The general messages that come across,” she added, “are you are not alone, we are here for you. You can talk to people about this. It’s good to talk. There are many different emotions you may go through. That’s OK.”

Although Abby Cabaddy’s parents are divorced in the story, Ferraro spoke to how important it was that Elmo, Rosita and Gordon, played by Roscoe Orman, appear in the story as well.

“We wanted there to be an adult, and that’s why Gordon is in it,” she said. “We wanted to show an example of a kid talking to an adult about this. Roscoe just did an incredible, wonderful job. We wanted to show there are many people in your life who can support you.”

If you would like to learn more about Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce and the ways Sesame Workshop is supporting families going through such a challenging transition, click here.

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We decided one way Sesame could help was to bring Abby Cadabby to meet and greet those most affected by the storm, those who could benefit from a little lightness in their lives after all they had gone through. Two weeks ago, our first site visit with HHS was a Red Cross shelter that had been set up in a gymnasium at Nassau Community College on Long Island, an area hit hard by the hurricane. Armed with the Here for Each Other resources, activity sheets, stickers, toys, and DVDs, we stopped by the shelter to visit the families and children who had been displaced there. The shelter was home to about 700 people, all of whom had been located there after much damage to their homes and some who no longer had homes to go back to. They were spending their days in a huge gym, with not much more than a cot and some personal belongings to call their own, as they struggled to try to rebuild their lives post-storm.

Abby visited the play area set up for the young children at this shelter, where volunteers from Save the Children and Children’s Disaster Services had been offering support to the 30 or so children who were spending time at the shelter. Because most of them had gone back to school and resumed some normalcy in their lives, there were only a handful of children present at the time we were there, but the joy Abby brought to those children, and even the adults at the shelter, was remarkable. It was a truly amazing experience to be a part of these relief efforts, not only to be there to provide tangible resources for these providers and the families they serve, but to bring a bit of lightness to those who have been going through so much.

The day after the Red Cross shelter visit with HHS, we headed to HOPES Head Start in Hoboken, another city devastated by the hurricane. Again we showed up with a bunch of Sesame books, DVDs, outreach materials, and the Here for Each Other resources, not knowing what to expect and who we would meet. The school had just re-opened a little more than a week after the hurricane had hit, so all of these children had been impacted by the storm in one way or another. There were about 80 pre-school children who were all so thrilled to meet Abby, and after the long week they had gone through, we were thrilled to bring some happiness to these children and their teachers.

While we at Sesame are not the ones on the ground doing the necessary and exhausting relief and recovery work, the fact that the resources and materials we produce can help a community in need, give families reassurance that whatever they are going through they are not alone, and bring a little bit of joy to those who need it, well, that is exactly why we do the work we do. We’re grateful for wonderful partners like HHS who gave us the opportunity to do these site visits and bring our resources into the communities in need of them. For all of the wonderful and resilient people we met who are going through so much- we are here for you.

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