Contact:
Tania Panczyk-Collins
202 654-4222
tpanczyk@apts.org

Public Television Honors Sesame Workshop For Supporting American Military Families

WASHINGTON—February 10, 2009—With military personnel experiencing longer and more frequent deployments, their families are shouldering much of the burden in many ways. So Sesame Workshop developed a program called “Talk, Listen, Connect” to help families cope, and the enormous success and forward-thinking approach of the initiative is why the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) presented Sesame Workshop with the Champion of Public Broadcasting Award.

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind “Sesame Street,” was presented the Champion Award on February 10, 2009 during APTS Capitol Hill Day in Washington, D.C., surrounded by a military family, who applauded the program.

Building on the program’s success, Sesame Workshop has produced a primetime special, airing on April 1 on PBS at 8 p.m. (check local listings), featuring actor/singer Queen Latifah and singer John Mayer, who will join “Sesame Street’s” Elmo to present “Coming Home: Military Families Cope with Change.” This special tells stories of service members who return home with injuries, visible and invisible, and explores the heroic struggles their families face in discovering a new way of finding a “new normal.”  It salutes the extraordinary courage and strength of these military families and offers the general public a powerful glimpse into what they often must endure.
“The response to this initiative is overwhelming and demonstrates the positive impact Sesame Workshop can have on children when coping with their parents deployed overseas and the issues that arise when they return.” said APTS President and CEO Larry Sidman.

“We are honored to have our work with military families recognized by APTS as part of our continuing commitment to public broadcasting,” said Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary E. Knell.  “Together we share a long history of supporting our communities and addressing their needs. With ‘Talk, Listen, Connect,’ we are proud to partner with public television stations in telling our soldiers’ story to the broader American public—a family story of coping with deployment, redeployment, returning changed from the experience.”

“Talk, Listen, Connect” provides vital support and resources for military families with children between the ages of two and five who are experiencing the effects of deployments, multiple deployments and when a parent returns home changed due to a combat related injury.  The materials consist of bilingual (English/Spanish) multimedia outreach kits with DVD’s starring the Muppets from “Sesame Street” and print materials for children, parents and caregivers and facilitators. Sesame Workshop has produced over 1.3 million kits that are being distributed, at no cost, to individual families, schools, child care programs, family support programs, hospitals and rehabilitation centers and other organizations serving the needs of military families. The Talk, Listen, Connect materials are also available online at www.sesamestreet.org/tlc.