Press Releases

Helping Little Children Face Big Challenges

Sesame Street teams up with Committee for Children to help kids overcome odds

NEW YORK—“Providing your love and support is the most important step in helping children develop the confidence to overcome anything they face,” reads the Little Children, Big Challenges page of nonprofit Committee for Children’s website. Sesame Workshop, creators of the iconic Sesame Street TV show, asked the Seattle-based nonprofit to collaborate in the dissemination of materials that will help young children and their adult caregivers face challenging situations like divorce and incarceration, as well as addressing general resilience.

The Little Children, Big Challenges initiative comes in the form of toolkits containing resources for parents and caregivers of children ages 2–5. The toolkits, which are available online for free, feature videos and songs from favorite Sesame Street characters downloadable tips and guides for parents and educators, and also include free mobile apps on the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon.

Committee for Children’s Mia Doces has been collaborating with Sesame Workshop on their social-emotional learning and anti-bullying content for several years. Says Doces, “We are proud to extend our ongoing work with the Sesame Workshop by making these high-quality materials available to our community of teachers and families. The ways in which the Workshop gathers top experts to create these research-based, engaging and practical materials are so directly aligned with the work we do here at Committee for Children.”

“Sesame Workshop’s mission is to help all children reach their highest potential,” said Lynn Chwatsky, Vice President for Community and Family Engagement at Sesame Workshop. “We can’t do this work without the help of partners like Committee for Children, who have an established reputation for providing social-emotional learning resources to educators and caregivers.  Through this partnership, we will empower even more young children and the adults in their lives with tools that can help build resilience skills to cope with changes such as divorce, incarceration, and everyday challenges.”


About Committee for Children

Seattle-based nonprofit Committee for Children’s research-based educational programs, including the award-winning Second Step Program, teach social-emotional skills to prevent bullying, violence, and abuse and improve academics. Their curricula are used in over 25,000 schools across the United States and around the world. To learn more, go to www.cfchildren.org.