Ulitsa Sezam

Ulitsa Sezam uses engaging live action, animation, and colourful characters in an effort to meet the educational needs of young children (ages 3-6) in Russia - through an entertaining medium. The series incorporates an educational curriculum created by Russian educators and child development experts. Ulitsa Sezam engages preschoolers to learn about the lives and interests of people from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, including their own. In addition to diversity, it also focuses on good nutrition, health and well-being. The series includes regionally diverse original material produced and filmed in Russia, as well as segments from the Sesame Street International Library.

The Ulitsa Sezam set features a Russian street surrounded by homes and stores that are populated by both Ulitsa Sezam Muppets (puppet characters) and human characters. For example, the bright pink Muppet "Businka" (Busya) has a vivid imagination and is full of joy. She has a passion for carrots and makes many different dishes out of them. Kubik is a very thoughtful, intelligent, and practical character with orange fur and dark red hair. He loves to construct and repair things and is always solving problems. Zeliboba enjoys nature and lives in the hollow of a gigantic oak tree. He has an exceptional nose, which he uses to detect smells, moods, the weather, and even music. The kind-hearted Zeliboba collects neckties of all types, sizes and colors. He even has a tie museum on Ulitsa Sezam.

Nestlé, with the help of Russian education and nutrition experts, created the Good Nutrition Program with an Ulitsa Sezam-based in-school nutrition education programme. The goal is to communicate basic messages about healthy eating in a fun way that engages the children. At the core of the programme is a full-colour, 72-page workbook of stories, recipes, exercises, lessons and quizzes presented by Ulitsa Sezam characters. A key consideration in creating these materials was to honour Russian culinary tradition while taking into account the tight budgets faced by many households. The children keep the workbook and take it home to show their families, which is a strategy for bringing the dietary lessons to a wider audience. The lessons, which are written in narrative form, focus mainly on affordable changes to eating habits and lifestyles, such as doing plenty of exercise, eating a balanced diet with lots of fruits and vegetables, chewing properly, and cutting down on fatty foods. When the books are sent to new schools they are backed up by workshops for teachers, an explanatory leaflet, and posters to hang in the classrooms; a phone line has been set up for teachers seeking further support. An educator is employed full time as a consultant to the programme, which the ministry of education now recommends as part of the national curriculum.

Early Childhood Development, Education, Nutrition.

Reflecting on the Good Nutrition Program, Nestlé "says the response has been extremely encouraging. Russian textbooks are generally of poor print and paper quality, and the bright workbooks, with their high-quality paper, 70-odd pictures and an especially-prized double-page spread of stickers, have been eagerly snapped up by schoolchildren. They are also free, which is a rarity in a country where non-basic school books usually have to be bought....'If you can influence eating behaviour in children at a young age it's hopefully something they will carry for the rest of their lives,' says Jennifer Galenkamp, head of Nestle Food LLC's external corporate affairs. 'But we are also reaching teachers and parents with these nutritional messages, and we've had many comments back from adults saying they’ve learned things they didn’t know through the materials.'" (Excerpted from a Nestlé case study on the Ethical Performance Best Practice website.) Approximately 170,000 schoolchildren have been exposed to the programme.