As hurricanes, floods, wildfires and other extreme weather events disrupt more families, Sesame Workshop is expanding its efforts to help young children understand what is happening, prepare for emergencies and cope with what comes afterward.
As AccuWeather reports, the nonprofit behind PBS’s Sesame Street has launched a new Extreme Weather response initiative, beginning with the new special Storm on Sesame Street.
The initiative, supported by the PSEG Foundation, also includes educational resources designed to help families before, during and after extreme weather events. Sesame Workshop said the materials include videos, updated family guides, activities, a new storybook and Sesame Care Kits for families displaced by disasters.
Sesame’s Efforts Helping Children Through Disasters & Grief is Nothing New
Sesame Workshop’s efforts to help children through disasters and grief are not new. For Rocio Galarza, vice president of U.S. Educational Programs at Sesame Workshop, the work begins with listening to families. “We always start with research and with what the communities are telling us that they need and what parents are telling us that they need … it’s always been the guiding light”
In 2001, Sesame Street hosted a series of episodes were Big Bird was part of the experience of a hurricane. That storyline, Sesame Street Gets Through a Storm, returned after major disasters including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012. In the episodes, Big Bird’s nest is destroyed by a hurricane before his neighbors help rebuild it.
“That set of episodes were used again and again and, and for Hurricane Sandy, for Katrina, there was a lot of of people requesting to post it because they saw that it was important,” Galarza said. “Today, we realized that the requests and the information that we were disseminating around emergencies were really popular for a reason.”
Research Shows Children Born in 2020 will Experience Exponentially More Extreme Weather Events
The new initiative comes as Sesame Workshop cites research showing children born in 2020 are projected to experience 2 to 7 times as many extreme weather events as those born in 1960. The organization also said 64% of parents surveyed nationally reported experiencing at least one extreme weather event during the previous two years, and 78% of parents who experienced extreme weather worried about its impact on their children.
The result is a broader collection of resources that addresses both general emergency preparedness and specific hazards. These strategies include different types of weather events, including tornadoes, wildfires and flooding.
The resources emphasize helping children understand an emergency without overwhelming them, finding ways to manage difficult emotions and giving children age-appropriate ways to participate in preparedness and recovery. Sesame Workshop’s online resources also offer guidance for caregivers on maintaining routines, recognizing signs of stress and taking care of themselves.
Children can also have a role in what their families do before and after a disaster. “You also have strategies where children can be part of either the preparedness activities that parents are doing or the response activities they’re rebuilding,” Galarza said. “We talk about the little actions that children can do to be part of of that rebuilding.”
The initiative also addresses caregivers, recognizing that children often take cues from the adults around them. “That helps children so much when they model those self-care strategies,” Galarza said.
Explaining Disaster, Grief and Healing to Small Children
That need can become especially difficult when extreme weather brings loss of life.
Galarza recalled the deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country and the deaths of young campers, saying Sesame Workshop heard quickly from local partners looking for resources to help families. “Our PBS stations and some of the local partners, that we have, contacted us immediately, what information can we give, what materials can we give?” she said.
“By that time, we actually had some of the materials and we sent them the materials. I don’t think that they were posted yet, but it was a moment where the community needed to come together and so we did.”
Galarza said disasters involving children can make already difficult conversations even harder for parents. There was a natural link in what Sesame Street already offers for grief resources and extreme weather. “These events are happening more often and they’re getting harder to explain to children, particularly when they are casualties and the casualties are children themselves,” she said.
Storm on Sesame Street Addresses Difficult Subjects Through Familiar Settings & Characters
Storm on Sesame Street approaches those difficult subjects through a familiar setting and characters. Elmo and his friends prepare for a storm, learn ways to calm themselves when they are frightened and then confront a changed neighborhood after the storm passes. Celebrity guests Post Malone and Michelle Buteau appear in the special.
Elmo and his friends prepare a “go kit” for the storm and then after the storm, the focus shifts towards helping others through small acts of kindness. “It’s a beautiful way of highlighting not only the scary parts of an event, but also the community building that does come after that event and that helps people rebuild and recover,” Galarza said.
That message of resilience is central to what Sesame Workshop hopes children and families take from the initiative. “One thing that we wanted to highlight more particularly in this initiative is all the resilience and all of the strength that we see in these, in communities as they go through all of these difficult events and reminding them that, you know, children are resilient too.”
Storm on Sesame Street premiered on Netflix and PBS KIDS on Aug. 3 and will be available on YouTube on Sept. 25.
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Photo Credit: VIAVAL TOURS / Shutterstock.com
