Sesame Workshop

Humanitarian response in the face of the growing global refugee crises, millions of young children do not have access to early childhood development opportunities needed to help them recover from adverse experiences and prepare them to thrive. in addition, sudden onset crisis disrupted learning environments especially for low resource areas. throughout fy24, sesame workshop continued programs reaching young children and families affected by crisis, conflict, and displacement in the middle east, east africa, eastern europe, latin america, and south asia. through welcome sesame, sw continued its commitment to working in crisis and conflict settings. welcome sesame (continued in schedule o) programming leverages educational media that is distributed via broadcast and digital platforms. it is integrated into programs directly serving children and families affected by crisis and conflict in partnership with governments, humanitarian organizations, and local actors. as of now, welcome sesame encompasses work in bangladesh (play to learn), the middle east (ahlan simsim), ukraine, latin american, and east africa. under welcome sesame, we also responded to the crisis in israel and gaza. in colombia and uganda, sw implemented the inclusion and belonging for displaced learners project in partnership with the hilton foundation. the aim of this project is to build more inclusive communities by providing comfort and emotional support, building foundational knowledge and skills, and promoting socio-emotional development, positive identity, perspective-taking, and belonging. during fy24, we completed the first phase of the project and implemented full curriculum cycle in colombia and uganda in 45 classrooms, reaching 1,917 children. in the second phase, we implemented content in a total of 138 classrooms (30 classrooms in ecuador, 82 in colombia, and 26 early childhood centers in uganda). in ukraine, sw implemented educational media content, in partnership with irex/department of state and delivered caregiver content. the parenting program aims to provide caregivers with knowledge about self-care, psychological support, early learning, and social cohesion to support children ages 3-8. under this program, we reached more than 500 caregivers and library workers with our parenting program and content. we also renewed our partnership with children's network plusplus in ukraine for another year after successfully reaching 955k viewers through watch play learn in ukrainian. through internal investments, sw continued to build on welcome sesame content to meet the immediate crisis needs of children and families. in fy24, we completed four welcome sesame emergency response social media campaigns, linked to free to use content, reaching 41.2 million caregivers and created a foundational content package of easily translatable print resources and video content to meet future crises. these resources will ensure that we can meet the needs of children and families immediately following a crisis with adaptable and localized materials. in response to the israel-gaza crisis, we developed trauma packets in arabic and hebrew for parents and caregivers which were distributed via email to a broad network of partners as well as featured in paid social media campaigns throughout the region which reached 800k caregivers on facebook and instagram and 11.4m caregivers on youtube. we also partnered with our long-time broadcast partner in israel, hop!, to create and air psa's and short-form content on their channel. via the hop! social media channels, we also reached 1.6m people. the team continues conversations with mission-aligned partners in the region who can extend the impact of this work in response to on-going need. sesame workshop continued implementation of ahlan simsim in mena, a groundbreaking program that delivers early learning and nurturing care through ecd services to children and caregivers affected by conflict and displacement in iraq, jordan, lebanon, a