Sesame Street Resource Video Helps Military Families Deal with Change

Sesame Workshop is planning to launch the second phase of the "Talk, Listen, Connect" program later this month. The program, including an all-new resource video, is designed to help military families deal with serious issues that affect the children of injured military veterans.

The second phase, entitled "Deployments, Homecomings, Changes", will help families who are now dealing with multiple deployments and parents returning with serious injuries.

More than a million children have parents who are in the military and have been deployed in the last six years; in 2006 Sesame Workshop produced a special video designed to help military families cope with the strains of deployment. Today more than 18,000 military personnel in Iraq or Afghanistan have been wounded or seriously injured; Sesame Workshop plans to give support to families that now have to deal with the reality and serious effects of these situations.

In the new video production, Muppet monster Rosita struggles to cope when her father, Ricardo, returns home in a wheelchair. The video will feature Rosita and her parents; along with Elmo and his "military dad", Louie Monster.

Sesame Workshop will begin to distribute the free video and resource pack to military starting on April 29, 2008. Sesame Workshop also plans to make the new video and resources available, for free, via the internet.

For more information on the "Talk, Listen, Connect" series, and to view the first set of resource videos ("Talk, Listen, Connect" and "When Parents are Deployed"), be sure to visit the initiative's official website. I'll keep you updated as more information on this, and other Sesame Street projects, surface.