By Elishya Perera
(CWBN)_Sesame Street’s educational non-profit, Sesame Workshop, has introduced two new residents to the Muppet family this year.
6-year-old twins, Noor and Aziz, belong to the Rohingya Muslim Community living in a large refugee camp in Bangladesh.
The new pair are a part of a $200 million effort to develop innovative ways of education for the Rohingya children inside the world’s largest refugee camp. Sesame Street Workshop said the initiative seeks to “help these young children to overcome trauma and stress, and build resilience, while engaging in fun play-based learning activities.”
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), beginning 2017, more than 723,000 refugees fled prosecution and violence in Myanmar for Cox’s Bazar where they are living in overcrowded camps.
The Agency says that of the Rohingya refugees arriving in Bangladesh, more than 40 per cent are children under the age of 12, and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports more than 680, 000 of these children live in Cox’s Bazaar.
Noor and Aziz will star alongside children’s favourite Elmo, in a series of video segments which focus on social-emotional learning, math, science, and health and safety.
“These are two very special Sesame Muppets — for most Rohingya children, Noor and Aziz will be the very first characters in media who look and sound like them,” Sherrie Westin, president of Social Impact at Sesame Workshop, said. And according to Sesame Street, the new series is “rooted in the rich Rohingya culture and informed by extensive research and input from Rohingya families.”
