Sesame helps military kids
By Tina Benitez -- Gifts and Dec, 4/25/2006 10:03:00 AM
NEW YORK—To say “goodbye” to your child isn’t easy—especially, if you are one of the active service men and women currently serving in the military. And, according to U.S. Department of Defense figures, more than 43 percent of those active servicepeople have children. Sadly, more than 1,200 of those children have lost a parent serving inIraqandAfghanistan.
Additional research shows that 483,514 children of active duty military members and 177,888 children of Reserve and Guard members are less than 5 years old.
In response to the growing need for product to help younger children cope with deployed parents and the difficult transition of being apart, Sesame Workshop this summer will launch Talk, Listen, Connect: Helping Families Cope with Military Deployment. Theprogram features an activities kit designed for children ages 3 to 5 who are dealing with a parent who will be, or are currently, deployed overseas. Each kit provides different activities, from welcoming a parents home with a party toways tokeep track of the time parents are away from home, as well asways to maintain communication while separated.
The program was developed with a $1 million donation from from Wal-Mart Stores,Bentonville,Ark., as well as additional support from the New York State Office of Mental Health (NYSOMH) and Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC), to develop the initial launch of 138,000 bilingual, multiple-media outreach kits with DVDs to help young children of members of the United States Armed Services, National Guard and Reserves deal with the various stresses of military life.
Beginning this summer, the kits will be available at no cost to schools, childcare programs, family support centers and other organizations serving the needs of military families. Wal-Mart and Sesame Workshop will also explore additional ways to distribute Talk, Listen, Connect with other organizations and programs that support military families and plan to produce a bilingual Public Service Announcement and online content.
Jeanette Betancourt, vice president, content design, for the education, research and outreach department of Sesame Workshop, tells Playthings.com that while the program is currently for children ages 5 and under, the kit can help families with children of all ages cope with military deployment. “We’re finding that it appeals to the entire family,” she says. “Many have younger children and older children. There’s a lot of time required to provide information to younger children. We did a thorough analysis for military families, including a lot of information currently available for children on deployment. We found there was less [information] for preschoolers and for school children and even less in terms of something parents could share with kids and hardly nothing in Spanish.”
Sesame is also in the works to make the kits available to retail outlets who have a need for more military family-oriented product in-store. However, they want to find a way to keep the kit free-of-charge, and will start with Wal-Mart and may continue with specially designed, in-store programs for other retailers following the launch.
"We’re looking to make this as accessible and available as possible,” Betancourt says. “We want this available for daily life.”
For children who have lost parents, Sesame would also like to develop another program covering this issue. "This was brought up in focus groups that, in addition, we need to focus on issues that are important including injury or loss. This kind of project would require further support, including experts on how to cope, and it's something we're looking into to see if it's possible in future."
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