Q is for quarantine. Sesame Workshop is partnering with the Inter-American Development Bank to launch preschool content in Latin America and the Caribbean to support families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sesame Workshop will make 100 hours of content—including new original animations, songs, four seasons of Sésamo (pictured), as well as new episodes of Elmo’s World and Cookie’s Crumby Pictures—available to the regions’ public television channels and ministries of education with funding from the Washington, DC-based organization. Sesame content will also be made available across Latin America and the Caribbean through the messaging platform WhatsApp.
The programming will focus on physical and mental health and be available in Spanish and Portuguese. This content will be accessible until June 2021.
This effort comes as Sesame Workshop continues to focus on serving its international audience. In May, the organization hired Alvin Fu as VP and GM of Greater China with a focus on expanding Sesame Street‘s commercial business across Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Pandemic-focused content has been rolling out in recent weeks as companies increasingly work the current crisis into their content. Efforts include HBO Max’s recently greenlit series Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020, which will see real-life students star as high school seniors dealing with the pandemic, and new quarantine-themed episodes of Italian kids show Jams.