2020 CONCORDIA ANNUAL SUMMIT

New Approaches to Supporting Vulnerable Children During a Pandemic

MAIN STAGE

• Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, is geared towards helping children exceed. Just last year at the 2019 Concordia Annual Summit, Basma, a new member of Sesame Street, was introduced as a means to address an urgent need facing children in the Middle East. Providing a positive light for children dealing with homeland crises, Basma offers a form of education and support to vulnerable children in hopes of teaching them new ways of learning and coping amid difficult times.  
• Out of the 12 million people displaced from Syria, half have been children. Bringing early learning to children, the new Sesame Street addresses the crisis facing children. Creatives sought to make characters that children could relate to, and that offer a world of laughter, fun, and innocence. 
• The curriculum for the show looks to introduce a vocabulary of emotions and a means of dealing with these emotions in healthy ways. This initiative hopes to create a circle of care for children of the most vulnerable families, helping build the resilience they need for the future. 
• COVID-19 has brought unprecedented damage, and further displaces and hurts those that were already struggling to begin with. Educational media therefore needs to assist families during these challenging times.

“If we are to build resilience in underprivileged, displaced, and disadvantaged children across the world, we must start now,” Sherrie Westin