In Focus: USAID Introduces Sesame Street Television Program in Bangladesh

Muppets from Bangladesh's new Sesame Street television show.

Sisimpur is the first children’s educational program of its kind in South Asia.

USAID/Bangladesh is pleased to announce that Sisimpur, the Bangladeshi version of Sesame Street, began airing on national television on April 15, 2005.

USAID has initially sponsored the program for three years with over $7 million in total funding. The television series is the first of its kind in Bangladesh and is estimated to reach 4 million children during its first two years of programming.

A total of 26 episodes were produced for the first season and another 32 shows are currently being produced for the second season. The program will be broadcast on Bangladesh TV (BTV) four times per week, with a new episode each Friday. BTV has been a key counterpart for this project. USAID is currently negotiating a bilateral agreement with the Government of Bangladesh regarding its early childhood education initiatives. This agreement would, among other things, establish a formal overarching framework for the roles and responsibilities of both USAID and the Government of Bangladesh in relation to the Sisimpur program.

Sisimpur uses a similar educational approach as the American version of Sesame Street and adds its own unique Bangladeshi flavor. The Muppet characters include Halum, a Bangla-speaking vegetarian Bengal tiger, Tuktuki and Ikri-Mikri, two spirited and inquisitive girls, and Shiku, the bespectacled golden jackal. The production embraces all that is best about Bangladesh in terms of its art, story-telling and song and uses them to support and adapt the original program format that is teaching kids around the world.

Sisimpur storybooks and other supplemental material are distributed among pre-school aged children. Teachers and parents will also be trained to use these materials effectively to support the children’s learning.

In an effort to reach children in remote areas, USAID-Bangladesh has partnered with Save the Children USA to produce and deploy a small fleet of flatbed cycle rickshaws that carry a TV, a DVD player, and a generator to villages that are not serviced by power lines or are otherwise limited in their ability to access Sisimpur. The rickshaw goes to each location once a week and draws a remarkable amount of viewers, sometimes with as many as 200 people gathering to watch the show.

With the introduction of Halum, Tuktuki, Ikri-Mikri and Shiku, Bangladesh is ready to join the ranks of those countries that have a mass-media program that is entertaining, endearing, and, above all, a very successful delivery system of literacy and numeracy learning that will be available to every child who can get to a TV.