Preventative Play: Sesame Street and World Vision in Zambia

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Children at Chalimbana Primary School, in Chongwe ADP, Zambia, pose with Sesame Street muppet Raya. Left to right: Jeremiah Malilakufa, 10, boy; Memory Nkoloma, 11, girl; and Ngonga Mukange, 9, girl; all not sponsored. STORY: Having Fun with a Muppet, by Dr Greg Allgood, WVUS Raya is one of the newest Sesame Street Muppets. She’s a 6 year-old green girl that knows a lot about clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. What a coincidence that she was born on World Water Day! Raya is getting some help from her friend Elmo. Sesame Street is the largest informal educator of children in the world and has characters that help address important social causes including HIV and obesity. World Vision believes that children can be powerful agents of positive change in communities and because of this, a critical part of World Vision water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs in the developing world includes outreach to schools. World Vision reaches an amazing 4 new schools every day with clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. World Vision has learned that children can not only receive important messages about healthy habits but they can also deliver these messages effectively to their brothers, sisters, and parents. By doing this, they can dramatically change the health of a community. And, importantly, kids respond best when they’re having fun while they learn. Sesame Street and World Vision have partnered to leverage each other’s strengths to help end the global water, sanitation, and hygiene crisis. The educational activities are focused on after school WASH clubs. The curriculum has been developed using the expertise of both Sesame Street and World Vision. By working with Zambian educational experts the curriculum can be adapted to the local context. The result is a “WASH-Up kit” that can be provided to a school. It includes two floor mats that include games to teach the proper behaviors. One mat uses a slide and ladder game, the other is like Tw