The potential of school-based WASH programming to support children as agents of change in rural Zambian households

Background Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions frequently assume that students who learn positive WASH behaviors will disseminate this information to their families. This is most prominent in school-based programs, which rely on students to act as “agents of change” to translate impact from school to home. However, there is little evidence to support or contradict this assumption. Methods We conducted a quasi-experimental, prospective cohort study in 12 schools in rural, southern Zambia to measure the impact of WASH UP!, a school-based WASH program designed by the creators of Sesame Street. WASH UP! is an educational program that uses stories and interactive games to teach students in grades 1–4 about healthy behaviors, such as washing hands and using the latrine. We completed in-person interviews with grade 1 and 4 students (N = 392 and 369, respectively), their teachers (N = 24) and caregivers (N = 729) using structured surveys containing both open- and closed-ended questions. We measured changes in knowledge and whether students reported sharing WASH-related messages learned in school with their caregivers at home. Results Student knowledge increased significantly, but primarily among students in grade 1. Overall rates of students reporting that they shared messages from the curriculum with their caregivers rose from 7 to 23% (p < 0.001). Students in grade 4 were 5.2 times as likely as those in grade 1 to report sharing a WASH-related message with their caregivers (ARR = 5.2, 95% C.I. = (2.3, 8.9); p < 0.001). Conclusions Although we measured only modest levels of student dissemination of WASH UP! messages from the school to the home, students in grade 4 showed significantly more promise as agents of change than those in grade 1. Future work should prioritize developing curricula that reflect the variability in needs, capabilities and support in the home and community among primary school students rather than a single approach for a wide range of ages and contexts.

The Tipping Point – when, how and why did We start thinking “Pandemically”?

Suspended between theories of manipulation and the public health catastrophe that continues to shake our world, there is a whole range of answers to the questions posed by scientists, doctors, politicians and ordinary folk – when, where, how and why did it all begin? Given the various concepts and ideas on the future corona world, it is important to keep asking and (still) avoid simple and mind-numbing answers. The world of media has also reached or surpassed a tipping point – can we even shake the illusion we deserve some “new normal”? Or perhaps the future holds a “new abnormal” world, alongside the “old abnormal”. On the one hand the pandemic has changed our behavioural patterns, and will continue to do so, but it has also changed our way of thinking, reaching conclusions and perceiving the external world and the world within us. On the other hand, are we in part historically regressing through our acceptance of half-dictatorship, lockdowns, immovability, blandness and hiding our smiles? Why and how might the philosophy of the media help with this challenge of views in some new techno-feudalism? Will we adopt any new lessons? We must first remember the legendary children’s show Sesame Street and its revolutionary insight – you can teach children only if you attract their attention first...

The Letter of the Day is Ñ

This chapter presents the case of Sesame Street and its frank, cutting-edge performance of bilingual culture on children’s television for over 50 years, mainly through its creation of the lovable, instructional, Spanglish speaker “Maria,” conceived by show producers as a representation of urban Puerto Ricans. Sesame Street and children’s television, at this moment in the study, help to consider some of the limitations of youth literature, particularly when it comes to expressing bilingual culture, as opposed to television, a performance-based media. This is the only chapter-length study of Sonia Manzano’s performance and writing on the show as Maria for over 40 years, one of the first Latinas on a major US television show.

How they got to Sesame Street: Children’s Television Workshop’s appropriation of advertising tactics for effective childhood literacy education

One of the staple components of Sesame Street over the last 50 years is the short, animated segments that periodically interrupt the narratives and focus on brief educational and literacy concepts. Histories of the show have recognized these segments and referred to them as commercials, but to date, literature lacks a comprehensive examination of the managerial forces involved in planning and producing these commercial segments to identify the depth of understanding Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) possessed as they created this material. Even more intriguing, contemporary literature has identified conceptual overlaps between the components of successfully persuasive children’s advertisements and successful strategies for teaching early childhood literacy. This study uses a historical analysis and primary evidence, from corporate and executives’ personal archives, to identify and chronicle how CTW married literacy education and advertising to effectively “sell” literacy to child viewers of Sesame Street. This study also identifies important implications and opportunities for research and the future promotion and presentation of educational concepts in contemporary digital media settings.

Using a Participatory Approach to Create SEL Programming: The Case of Ahlan Simsim

This paper highlights the use of a participatory, trauma-informed approach in the creation of Ahlan Simsim, a Sesame Street television program for the Middle East, and asserts the importance of using a participatory approach to designing culturally relevant SEL content. Ahlan Simsim is a component of a larger initiative of the same name, which was created by Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee and funded by the MacArthur and LEGO foundations. This program brings early learning and nurturing care to children and families affected by the Syrian crisis through a combination of mass media and direct service programming. In this article, we present a review of the research and consultations Sesame Workshop conducted with local communities and local child-development experts in Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon from August to November 2018. Sesame Workshop's aim was to identify and refine the television program's focus area and to create locally relevant, trauma-informed content that draws from social and emotional learning strategies that resonate most and have the greatest impact with audiences in the Syrian response region. We argue that, for SEL programming to achieve maximum impact, it is critical that program designers develop social-emotional frameworks for children from the ground up by working with local caregivers and practitioners.