Sesame Street reveals new Rohingya refugee muppets

Sesame Workshop, the educational nonprofit behind Sesame Street, announced two new residents set to join the Muppet family this year: Noor and Aziz, 6-year-old twins from the displaced Rohingya Muslim community living in the world's largest refugee camp. The twins are part of a Rohingya-language educational campaign and will be shown to families living in settlements around Bangladesh.

The first Rohingya muppets were introduced as part of Sesame Street's Play to Learn humanitarian program, which aims to support children and families affected by the growing Rohingya and Syrian refugee crises by providing early education to displaced families around the world, including the city of Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh. The city is home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children.

In an NBC exclusive, Sesame Workshop described the $200 million effort as an innovative form of educational intervention that seeks to "help these young children to overcome trauma and stress, and build resilience, while engaging in fun play-based learning activities," according to Sarah Bouchie, chief impact officer at the LEGO Foundation. The new videos expand on the Humanitarian Play Lab, an educational program run by Bangladesh-based humanitarian organization BRAC.

The series is sponsored by grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the LEGO foundation, NBC reports.

Beginning in 2017, many Rohingya families were forcibly displaced from their homes in Myanmar, after government troops began attacks on the group. There're now more than 800,000 Rohingya refugees living in Cox's Bazaar. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, more than 40 percent of Rohingya refugees arriving in Bangladesh are children under the age of 12. UNICEF reports more than 680,000 children live in Cox's Bazaar.

Sherrie Westin, president of Social Impact at Sesame Workshop, told NBC that they hope to intervene in a humanitarian aid gap during this crisis — less than 3 percent of aid goes towards education, Westin said. In a press release issued by Sesame Workshop Wednesday, Westin explained that the new characters will address the need for early education and "learning for play" in the context of both the refugee crisis and COVID-19, which has exacerbated the difficulties of providing education to Rohingya refugee families.

“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," Westin said. Sesame Street says the new series is "rooted in the rich Rohingya culture and informed by extensive research and input from Rohingya families."

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Noor and Aziz will star alongside muppet favorite Elmo in a series of video segments focused on social-emotional learning, math, science, and health and safety. The videos will be available to communities next September, NBC reports, while printed educational materials featuring Noor and Aziz will be distributed this spring.

Bouchie said in the press release that the hope is for Noor and Aziz to become a positive representation of Rohingya children. "Noor and Aziz not only share similar experiences with many of the children who find themselves in this crisis," Bouchie said, "they will also help these young children to overcome trauma and stress, and build resilience."

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