Sesame Square - Nigeria

The series, developed in collaboration with education advisors which include Nigeria's Ministries of Health and Education, is designed to promote fundamental literacy, numeracy, the importance of recycling, health, and good hygiene habits in settings that foster children's self-esteem, cultural pride, and respect for differences and diversity. Sesame Square also emphasises malaria prevention, HIV/AIDS, immunisation education, and girls' empowerment. The project combines locally produced segments, including live action films and animation, with international library segments.

The programmes feature Kami, a 5-year old female Muppet with golden fur who is HIV-positive and has an adventurous and inquisitive nature, and Zobi, a furry blue male Muppet who likes to get involved in what others are doing and tries to help them - usually with comical results.

A critical component of the project is an extensive outreach programme involving the delivery of a combination of locally-produced print materials and video, distributed to children and caregivers in eleven states via a network of collaborating government and non-governmental organisations. Outreach materials, in tandem with training activities for educators, parents, and other participating caregivers, provide opportunities to reach children who do not have regular access to television, including orphans and vulnerable children.

The third season of Sesame Square features a new animated segment in which Kami and Big Bird find themselves on a magical bus ride, during which the driver, Didi, answers questions about their diverse nation and the basic educational concepts every Nigerian child should know. In addition to the television season, Sesame Square's educational content can now be found on mobile devices via the Worldreader book app. The app enables mobile phone users in Nigeria to transform low-tech mobile phone displays into smart-phone displays, similar to those of iPhones, Androids, and other smart-phone systems. According to Sesame Workshop, this transformation makes it possible for parents and educators without a television to expose children to the educational potential of Sesame Square. As of June 2015, over 30 mobile phone stories and activities for feature phones are available.

In addition to the broadcast of Sesame Square Season 3, local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have distributed over 2,700 new outreach kits with health, mathematics, and science learning materials. These kits are designed to support the educational messages of the television show and promote interactive learning through games and other activities and are expected to reach over 80,000 children and 2,700 caregivers throughout Nigeria (2,700 English literacy outreach kits and 1,600 Hausa literacy outreach kits were distributed; 2,700 math, science, and health outreach kits were distributed). NGOs continue to distribute the literacy outreach kits, which are designed to develop early reading skills in some of Nigeria's youngest learners. The literacy kits include a set of alphabet flashcards, an alphabet storybook, a story tree mat, a puppet kit, and a caregiver guide.

In 2013, Sesame Workshop received support to expand the Sesame Square project by adapting and dubbing 3 seasons of the television series into Hausa. The Nigeria-based team and a Hausa Advisory Group selected and dubbed a subset of Sesame Square content to create 39 episodes of the Hausa language programme Dandalin Sesame. The series, which will expand its reach to broadcast in northern Nigeria beginning in the autumn of 2015, features a new Hausa alphabet song. In addition, the Advisory Group adapted a set of basic literacy print materials into Hausa - 1,600 sets of which were distributed to 48,000 children and 1,600 caregivers in 6 northern states. To facilitate these activities, a series of trainings were held for education and production experts in Nigeria on translating and dubbing children's television content. Also, outreach training workshops, which coincide with the distribution of outreach kits, have been offered.

From 2013-2015, the Abuja-based Sesame Square team created Hausa literacy materials for use in public primary schools in six states in Northern Nigeria. Given the challenges of limited literacy levels in the region, along with variation in pronunciation, the team turned to the Speaking Book for supporting young children as they developed early literacy skills in Hausa. (See Related Summaries, below). Through a partnership between Sesame Workshop and Speaking Books, a new Hausa alphabet book featuring Kami and Zobi was born. This Speaking Book gives children the opportunity to practice proper pronunciation and communication skills in the language of their environment. The full toolkit aimed to support children's learning and literacy also includes Hausa Alphabet Flash Cards and A Story Tree Mat. The Sesame Square team distributed the Speaking Books, along with the other learning materials, through a series of teacher trainings in the public and Islamiyya schools in Northern Nigeria. A set of Master Trainers was selected from the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to lead step-down trainings that would prepare educators to use the learning materials in their classrooms.

In 2015, Sesame Square expanded its reach through engagement with a new Sesame project focused on sanitation and hygiene knowledge and behaviours. The "Cleaner, Healthier, Happier" initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, consists of a multi-media intervention to promote positive health behaviours in children ages three to seven years and their caregivers in Nigeria, Bangladesh, and India. See Related Summaries, below.

Children, Education, Health, HIV/AIDS, Immunisation and Vaccines.

Nigeria's education challenges include the fact that less than one-third of Nigerian children attend preschool, and only about 60% participate in any formal schooling. The number of Nigerian children at the start of the Sesame Square project was estimated to be 43 million under nine years of age and 25 million under six years of age. The majority of these children live in poverty; between 1994 and 2004, 71% of the Nigerian population lived on less than one dollar per day. Forty percent of Nigeria's adult population and nearly 30% of the youth population (aged 15-24 years) are illiterate, and there is a disproportionate number of illiterate women. The top reasons cited for low school attendance are monetary cost and opportunity cost - families' need for children to stay home and work.

 In 2011, Sesame Workshop commissioned a quasi-experimental study to assess the impact of exposure to Sesame Square television and print materials. Compared to children who watched an alternate educational programme, those who were exposed to Sesame Square content performed better in tests of letter naming, following verbal instructions, counting, hand washing, cooperation, and gender equity attitudes. In a complementary qualitative study, interviewed teachers expressed strong appreciation for Sesame Square classroom materials, which they described as educationally effective, relevant for their curriculum, appealing, and fun.

 A 2014 viewership study revealed that approximately 7.7 million children ages 3-7 years had watched Sesame Square in the previous year; 60% of these children watch regularly (at least once per week). Parents rated it highly on attributes they felt were important for a children's programme, especially for being educational and entertaining.