Sherrie Westin is President of Global Impact and Philanthropy for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street. She leads the Workshop’s efforts to serve vulnerable children through mass media and targeted initiatives in the United States and around the world. Westin spearheaded a partnership to create the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response, bringing critical education and nurturing care to refugee children in the Syrian response region.
Working with the International Rescue Committee, she led Sesame Workshop’s efforts to compete for and win a historic $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation to fund this work. With an additional $100 million grant from The Lego Foundation, this initiative has expanded to Bangladesh. She also oversees Sesame Street in Communities, Sesame’s comprehensive initiative designed to give children the tools they need to overcome traumatic experiences.
Journalist Ray Suarez interviewed Westin to learn about Sesame Street’s efforts in Afghanistan, and how its local, culturally appropriate programs promote gender equity and plant the seeds for transformative societal change.
Ray Suarez: This idea that the Sesame Street world was transferable is not new, right? I mean there have been productions in a lot of places for a long time.
Sherrie Westin: Absolutely it’s not new. I love that Joan Ganz Cooney who created Sesame Street often said she thought she was creating the quintessential American show. You know, this was 50 years ago on a stoop in Harlem and within a year, Germany then Mexico, Brazil all wanted their own productions. And that started our creation of local Sesame adaptations in these countries, you know, reflecting their culture, addressing specific needs of children in their language and even creating indigenous moppets that children could relate to and see themselves.
Suarez: It’s funny because I was doing a lot of babysitting for my then baby brother. He is now 50 years old and I always felt like, I don’t even know why people in Iowa or Montana would want to watch this. This is a New York show. This is about kids like us.
Westin: Exactly. And I mean I your baby brother is now 50. So with Sesame Street just turned 50 this year. And you know, it was created obviously with the hope that it would appeal to all children, but it was the first show with a multiracial cast so children could see themselves. And I think the other thing that is so important is it was created to see if television at the time, that was quite radical, could be used to teach. And to help give less advantaged children some of the same advantages of their peers who were more upper middle class by arriving at school ready to learn.
Suarez: That you’re an impact officer, interests me because that title didn’t exist all that long ago. It’s no longer enough just to have an audience, a measurable audience that you can then turn around and say to somebody else, “We have this many people watching. You want to know if you’re reaching people on a different level. What is impact?
Westin: Well, impact is measuring outcomes. I mean for Sesame, actually Sesame Street is the most researched children’s show in the history of media, in children’s media. And we have more studies on the efficacy not just showing reach. Yes, I think we reached around 160 million children around the world, but showing impact on literacy, numeracy, social, and emotional skills. And we know that television can be used to teach. We also, now of course, more than television, every form of media. We also know that these characters are muppets are incredibly engaging and can be powerful role models. Not only teaching but also modeling behavior change, attitudes, opening minds, and that’s the power and the impact of our work around the world.
Suarez: Children who are living in a refugee camp have very different needs from one who live on a street in a town where there’s not bombs and there’s not shooting and nobody’s dying.
Westin: Well, yes and no. I mean we do know that all children, the first five years of their life is the most important time in terms of brain development, in terms of their ability to learn and that the investment in early education has the greatest return on investment of any other time. We also know that whether it’s a displaced refugee child in Jordan or whether it’s a child in the U.S. who is experiencing homelessness or the parent is incarcerated, that there are traumatic events.
It may not be conflict, but any traumatic event that is consistent in a child’s life in those early years can be enormously debilitating and literally affect their brain development. And so the most important thing to mitigate that is early intervention and more engagement with a caring adult. Whether that’s a child in you know, Sacramento or a child in Syria. So we do adapt our work to meet needs of children. Sesame Street is uniquely able to tackle tough issues always from the lens of a child, but we also know the basic needs of a child for healthy development and for them to thrive is the same.
Suarez: One of the things that refugee specialists are reporting and not just from the Eastern Mediterranean in the Middle East, but from central Africa, from the various places in the world where kids are no longer in their home is that there’s a huge problem with the ending of continuity of school. That we’re talking about kids at key critical points in their growing up who were going to miss two to three years of classroom education.
Often there were learning in pretty suboptimal conditions in the first place. So your work, the work of Sesame Workshop is even that more viable, that much more viable. Does it have to be tailored to an audience that you can assume that there are other supplements going on?
Westin: Well, your point is so well taken. We are reaching through media, not just television, but WhatsApp, mobile, any means possible. Children who in many places have no other access to quality early education. So it is a powerful tool and the ability to scale is enormous, but we are focused more on the early years.
The work in the refugee response region is zero to eight because we also know that earlier we reach a child, the more effective and it puts them on a better path, you know, a greater trajectory to really not only arrive at school ready to learn, but to prepare for life. And so our work is designed for those ages, most of all. And I will say also that it’s important to note that while we’re reaching Syrian refugees, we’re reaching their neighbors in the host communities.
So the power of media is we’re reaching Jordanian children, Iraqi children, Lebanese children side by side with their new neighbors from Syria. And I think most people think of refugee is in a camp and we are reaching those children in camps. But about 80% of the Syrian refugees are actually living in what we call host communities or neighborhoods rather than in the camps themselves.
Suarez: I know that during the history of the program, there’s been formidable use of resources, educators, child psychologists, child development specialists. When you take on this kind of new assignment, you must have to reach out to people who understand the particular lives of these children.
Westin: Well, I love that you understand the DNA of Sesame so well because it’s critical. We’ve always included educators with producers and that is, you know, key to our success. It’s no different in these countries. We make sure that we’re local. We make sure we bring in local educators, local experts, because it’s so important that these productions are their own. We may have a model we know works, but we learn from the local experts to make sure it’s culturally sensitive to make sure we really understand the issues those children are facing. So in our Syrian response work, we have spent so much time with advisories, with experts and learning from those in Jordan and Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, before we begin the production and the creation of the content for direct services.
One of the things that makes this unique, I know people think of Sesame Street as a television show. We will be creating an all new show called Ahlan Simsim, which means “Welcome Sesame” in Arabic. That will be broadcast throughout the countries, but really throughout the whole Middle East region. But we’ll also be creating educational content books, games, materials, so that with the IRC staff, they’re trained, they have these tools and they’re going in directly with home visitation, community centers, schools. So you get both the mass media reach and the direct services and the direct touch for the most vulnerable children.
Suarez: I’ve always known that Sesame sweats the details. Whether Susan can be pregnant or how they handle it when Mr. Hooper dies.
Westin: Absolutely, that’s a great example. We were the only children’s show when Mr. Hooper died. You know, I talked to Joan Ganz Cooney our founder about this and she said they really struggled. How do they deal with it and decided can we address it head on? The partners were Harvard educators and they said, “We can, let’s try” and it was somewhat controversial that they do that, but it was about respecting children, teaching them about death. And that started our work in terms of tackling tough issues and doing so very directly, very sensitive to the age, child appropriate, but helping children tackle those issues.
Suarez: I would guess there’s a correlation or relationship when you’re talking about trying to reach children who’ve had a lot of disappointment in their lives, a lot of trauma. You are not only contextualizing but maybe healing. Is that fair?
Westin: Absolutely. You know, a lot of the curriculum in this new broadcast will be about building the social emotional skills and giving children the language to express their emotions. What we’ve learned from educators there is they don’t even have the appropriate language to explain what they’re feeling. And it makes it impossible for children to heal if they can’t talk about it, if they can’t express it.
That literally is a prerequisite to their learning. So we are really focusing a lot on the social emotional skills and the language of emotions. And as you know, when children can identify with this storyline and see themselves, it helps. And so in this new production, one muppet named Jed will have left his home. He will become best friends with a little girl muppet, Basmat. And then there’s all of, there’ll be other characters that you recognize from Sesame. These will be new local characters.
You can imagine right there that there are storylines about someone having to leave someone coming from somewhere else and becoming best friends with someone there because we want to be also modeling acceptance and inclusion and empathy.
Suarez: There are different norms around things like gender roles, the place of religion in the culture, and in the society. You have to be careful as well.
Westin: Oh listen, we have to be so careful, but it’s one of the things that Sesame has been able to do very effectively. I’ll give you an example. In Afghanistan, a country where girls’ education is a huge need. We have created, our local production is called Baghch-e-Simsim which means Sesame Garden in Dari and Pashto.
Because there’s a focus on gender equity, we deliberately made the lead muppet a little girl, her name is Zari. She wears her hijab, her school uniform. So she loves to go to school. She loves to learn and we are modeling not just for young girls that it’s okay for you to go to school, but for young boys that it’s okay for girls to go to school and so much not only the storylines, but even in the live action films, we make sure to show Afghan doctors who are women lawyers.
And the great news is that when we do our research, which is key little boys who watch test 29% higher on gender equity saying they think it’s okay for girls to go to school. Fathers through qualitative research have cited that watching Baghch- e-Simsim is the reason they changed their mind about permitting their daughters to go to school.
Believe it or not, in a country like Afghanistan, 70% of the audience is watching with an adult. So you think of that. I think because we’re a children’s show, we’re less threatening and we’re able to model live action pieces with a father helping a daughter go to school. I believe it’s where Sesame can have the greatest impact by planting those seeds for societal change.
Suarez: But are there people who say no? Are there people in these societies who see the Sesame product line as foreign from a foreign culture, even if it’s got, you know, grace notes and sign posts that it’s rooted in the country, but it’s an attempt from outside?
Westin: Well, I hope not because I don’t think young children in rural Afghanistan watching Baghch-e-Simsim know about Sesame Street in the U.S. In fact, children who grew up watching Sesamstraße in Germany believe Bert and Ernie are German. So in success, we really create local productions. Our partners are local. You know, our Afghan partners, we partner with the Ministry of Education. We don’t come in unless we’re wanted, but you’re right there cultural sensitivities and we put so much thought into them.
Even the example I gave you about Zari who is the little girl muppet in Afghanistan. You can’t imagine how much time and thought with local partners went into whether or not she would wear a hijab. Some felt she needed to be more progressive and not wear it. We ultimately decided she should because we want a young Afghan girls to be able to identify with her even though we are pushing, maybe not the limit, but really showing that she loves to go to school. Now she wears her hijab with her school uniform and she doesn’t when she’s in, you know, more casual dress. But I give it as an example just to show how much thought goes into every aspect of the characters in order to make sure that we’re culturally sensitive and still addressing the critical curricular goals.
Suarez: In a lot of countries of the world broadcasting, broadcast communication is highly regulated, highly centralized. There are authorities that have to be dealt with. Do you have almost a diplomatic arm that helps you gain a welcome in these new markets?
Westin: Well, our partner is the International Rescue Committee, and we chose them very carefully. We think they’re the perfect complement because they understand the refugee community. We understand the needs of young children. They have so many resources on the ground and really understand the region. So we rely on IRC, working with them on a lot of our government communications and relationships because it is so important that we work with local governments to scale and success.
This becomes incorporated in government education and school programs. And you know, in all sorts of countries around the world were on various different broadcasts, some satellite, some local, but we never accept a situation where they have any control over the content. That we would not do.
Suarez: What’s the feedback like? I mean, if a national system comes back and says, you know, this works, this works. What about this other thing? You know, is there a continuing dialogue that goes on rather than just the product that comes in and is put on?
Westin: Well, there’s a dialogue, but for the most part, our broadcasters have wanted the programming. You know, I’ll give an example in South Africa where we create Takalani Sesame. We are partners with the SABC, which is the public broadcasting system in South Africa and with our production company and with our sponsors. So it is something where we’re always having dialogues. We want to meet the educational needs of the broadcaster. So absolutely, there are continuous dialogues, but again, the content itself, we’re responsible for and that’s really important.
Suarez: And you know, South Africa an example of another country that’s gone through national trauma, it’s a little different now that it’s in the past but the residue of it is all over the place. It’s written into the face of the society. That must require a different kind of consultative and creative team.
Westin: Well, it’s a good point you make and you know, Sesame Workshop is in New York, but we now have a Sesame Workshop, India with the managing director there in India. And again, this helps it to be so local and we’ve created a Sesame Workshop, South Africa. So now there’s a managing director who South African and a small staff there. And I think that helps so much in really making sure that we are local, that it is South African. And that we are not dictating from the US, you know, just sending our US programming.
Sesame has seen 150 countries around the world and many of those are dubbed Sesame Street. But the work I have oversee and I’m talking about is in countries where we go in and create local adaptations that are specifically designed to meet the needs of those children. Often the funding is from the USAID or something like MacArthur Foundation. This work would not be possible without philanthropic support, which is why it’s so beneficial to be a place like the Skoll World Forum because of the opportunity it offers to be with like-minded social entrepreneurs and funders and you know, who are also looking at trying to solve some of these really challenging issues.
Suarez: So what’s on the drawing board? I mean there’s such a legacy of success that flows out of the original Sesame Street that no one would even blame you if you said, we got this licked. We have a model that works. We have a model that travels the globe. We got this.
Westin: But, no. A, there’s so many more children we could reach if we have the funding. B, there’s many children, our audiences being born every day and there will always be a need for early education, early learning for young children. So we’ll never have it licked. This is not like we’re trying to go out of business because we’re trying to solve or cure disease. The need for young children to have quality early education is ongoing. And if Sesame can play a role, particularly for those vulnerable children, those who are displaced, then that’s what we feel we have to do. That’s our mission.
Suarez: Are there places that you have your eye on that you’d like to open up as new markets? Are there places where you feel you’re needed that you haven’t been able to get to yet?
Westin: Well, absolutely. You know, one of the great things about the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change Award, we always hoped, even though it was focused on the Syrian response region, that it would be a catalyst for others to step up. For people to understand the importance of investing in early education in crisis settings. Currently less than 3% of all humanitarian aid goes to education and a tiny sliver of that to early education. And Lo and behold, within a year, the Lego Foundation inspired by MacArthur and they have been partners of ours in other places like South Africa, stepped up and decided to invest in humanitarian response with a similar grant, another $100 million to take us to Bangladesh and to try to address the Rohingya crisis.
Some similarities, some things very different from the Syrian response. But our hope is that we are able to create a model that can be replicated, whether that’s Sub-Saharan Africa, whether that’s Venezuela, Latin America. Sadly, there is always going to be a need for helping displaced children. I don’t think the refugee crisis is going away. And so our hope is that what we learn from these projects can be adapted to wherever there are children who are displaced around the world.
Suarez: Well, long may you wave. I hope someday my grandchildren will watch Sesame Street instead of just my baby brother.
Westin: I hope so too. Okay, well thank you so much and it’s a pleasure to be here.
