Sesame Street Muppet Raya教孩子们更好的卫生

Nonprofits, governments and health officials in developing countries have been struggling for years to clear a major hurdle in improving sanitation: convincing people of the need for and showing them how to properly use toilets, toilet paper and soap. In recent years the strategy has shifted, with organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank Group recognizing that children may be the best hope for changing a country’s sanitation behaviors. To find a mouthpiece for this new approach, they reached out to the authority on informal childhood education:Sesame Street。The global community’s new spokesperson for sanitation is a six-year-old Muppet namedRaya。

The green puppet, who has dark braided hair and wears a tan embroidered tunic over red trousers, was designed to connect with viewers in a variety ofdeveloping nations, where she’ll teach kids about the importance of proper sanitation through New York–based nonprofit Sesame Workshop’s television show, as well as printed materials. Sesame introduced Raya at the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge in New Delhi last year in the midst of a 30-month research project it’s conducting with the Gates Foundation to better understand how to communicate basic water, sanitation and hygiene information to children and their caregivers.

After the study’s two-year mark passed last year, Stephen Sobhani, vice president, international, at Sesame Workshop, says the researchers “found that there are basic building blocks and messages and behaviors that can be conveyed in multiple countries at the same time, be they rural, urban, school based or home based.” Enter Raya, who has quickly become “the defining character of Sesame Workshop as a global organization and our ambassador to the global health community,” Sobhani notes.

Sesame Street长期以来一直在为观众提供娱乐和教育的正确组合，这通常是八岁和年轻的儿童。Most Americans recognize characters like Big Bird and Cookie Monster, who have become household names over the show’s 45-year history, but fewer know of Sesame’s two dozen locally produced co-productions in other countries, some of which have been around for almost as long. Over the past two decades the show has expanded its mission from teaching children words, numbers and concepts like kindness to tackling heavier topics, including AIDS and obesity.

2002年，为了应对南非与艾滋病毒/艾滋病的战斗，芝麻街道的版本在该国展开了第一个艾滋病毒阳性布偶，一个名为Kami的无症状孤儿，他们反映并教授她的观众。Kami仍然是南非和尼日利亚最受欢迎的芝麻人物之一，Sobhani解释说，她为芝麻师作者提供了关于全球卫生问题的声明的语气。U.S. audiences will be more familiar with Cookie Monster’s shift to healthier eating, as part of the 2006 introduction of the Health Habits for Life segment on the American version of the show, in which the furry blue Muppet often reminds viewers that “cookie is a sometimes food.” Sesame Workshop added the segment to help combat rising childhood obesity in the U.S. “We’re not just talking about children’s issues; we’re talking to children about issues,” Sobhani says.

但如果Raya的外表不是奇怪的，那么她最喜欢的科目可能是。她并不害怕谈论大便 - 在哪里做，如何做到这一点，以后要做什么。“每个人都这样做的是什么，但很多人不喜欢谈论？好的，这不是一个真正的谜语。答案是大便！“raya（或扮演她的声音演员）在一封电子邮件中说II。“We all go, so let’s not be shy about it.”

Some viewers will cringe, but Raya’s creators say a little discomfort is nothing compared to what they and the World Bank call “the most superlative global health challenge of our time.” Lack of water sanitation and hygiene are responsible for a growing number of diseases in developing countries; Bangladesh, India and Nigeria, where Raya recently made her debut, are in the top ten.

Unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation contribute to about 88 percent of deaths from diarrheal diseases, according to the World Health Organization, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in developing countries more than 800,000 children under the age of five perish from sanitation-related illnesses each year.

A 2013 survey by child development researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed that children who watched co-productions ofSesame Street改善了学习结果。研究人员写道，该表演是一个“持久的可扩展性和有效的早期儿童教育干预措施”。这就是芝麻，盖茨基金会和世界银行正在与他们的卫生布偶依靠。Raya的下一站将是印度尼西亚, Vietnam or one of the other nations among the ten most afflicted by water- and sanitation-related disease.