US to fund $20m remake of Sesame Street for Pakistan

[Dance]

The United States is funding a Pakistani remake of the popular TV children's show Sesame Street.

In a new effort to win hearts and minds in Pakistan, USAID - the development arm of the US government - is donating $20m (£12m) to the country to create a local Urdu version of the show.

The project aims to boost education in Pakistan, where many children have no access to regular schooling.

The show is to be filmed in Lahore and aired later in the year.

"The programme is part of a series of ventures that is aimed at developing the educational infrastructure in the country," Virginia Morgan, a spokesperson for USAID, told the BBC.

"Education is one of the vital sectors that need help in Pakistan."

The show will be set in a village in Pakistan - rather than the streets of New York - with roadside tea shop and residents sitting on their verandas.

The remake will star a puppet called Rani, the six-year-old daughter of a peasant farmer, with pigtails and a school uniform, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Targeting five to nine year olds, the series will run on Pakistan national TV and regional language channels.

Sesame Street is not entirely alien to Pakistani audiences - the original version ran on local TV during the 1990s.

But it could only be understood across the limited, Westernised section of Pakistani society.

The Rafi peer theatre group, which is producing the local version in collaboration with Sesame Workshop, hopes to change that.

In an interview with a local edition of Newsweek, Imraan Peerzada‚ a writer for the new series‚ said the protagonist was a brave and daring girl.

"She will represent what little girls have to go through in this gender-biased society," he said.

He said her journey would inevitably touch on Pakistan's ongoing fight with militancy, but would not directly refer to religion.

"We don't want to label children‚" he said. "The basic learning tools of literacy‚ numeracy‚ hygiene‚ and healthy eating have to be in place first."

BBC News - US to fund $20m remake of Sesame Street for Pakistan

 

[Dance]

They could have built a school or hospital with that kind money!

 

[Omar1984]

The show will be set in a Pakistan village and be mostly in Urdu

BBC News - US to fund $20m remake of Sesame Street for Pakistan


Imagine cookie monster speaking in Urdu

 

[khurasaan1]

They could have built a school or hospital with that kind money!

Yes..thats right ..they r never sincere to Pakistan...except their evil goalz...

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Love seseme street Oscar , and big bird will fix those saudi attire wearing hard liners

Todays special letter is "T"

Tabuli
Tub
Terrorism
Terrified

and "D"

Dog
Drugs
Drones

And of course the number 10 , like 10 %


Can you tell me how to get , how to get to Patli Gali

I have to admit I watched Seseme Street

 

[r3alist]

wow, so whilst people are dying from all sorts of reasons the US wants to make sure paistani sit in front of their TV's watching seasame street,hilarious.

is the best they could come up with to "win" pakistan over?

 

[53fd]

Not a bad move. Kids need to be "indoctrinated" with Sesame Street than Madrassahs teaching them how to conduct suicide bombings. I hope its written in Pakhto & Punjabi instead of Urdu.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Well , Sesame Street is wonderful

But such programs should be done by our government

This PPP gov has failed Pakistan on
a) Terrorism
b) Education
c) Media

Its a complete failiure in Pakistan so far

Now they are intent to break up private entities like Geo , who promote peace and talks of reality check

 

[BATMAN]

Stupid idea... those have tv and time understand English.
Better to re-build schools.
Even better to pay salaries of HEC staff?

 

[Dance]

Stupid idea...
Better to re-build schools.
Even better to pay salaries of HEC staff?

But they rather use on a t.v show. It could have been a good idea, if Pakistan didn't desperately need schools, hospitals, healthcare, rehabilitation, etc.

And honestly most of the kids in Pakistan cannot even watch this show since they own no t.v's. Building a school would have been more effective.

 

[S-A-B-E-R->]

watch ppl lol

 

[Majnun]

Wasting money on this rather than on schools or hospitals, which would have a wider reach, so many properly-running schools could be established and administrated at a fraction of the cost for creating this Sesame Street show with limited viewership and little power to reach to much of the public.

 

[CLIPPER4LIFE]

This is pretty funny as the US is trying to instill their own media through the grassroots of Pakistan. The US have done this all the time. During the period of WWII and the Cold War they have used these so called media tools to change the mindsets of little children. An example would be "Looney Tunes or Disney" where they used this propaganda for people who basically have little to no education to support whatever the US was doing in the war from their prime age( Thus recruiting people for army, navy, etc..) . This is still quite funny

Though basically they are instilling their own propaganda into the young Pakistanis, thus they will influence their own ideas into the youth. Those sneaky bastards

 

[JonAsad]

I see Elmo look a likes every where now -

I think our version of Sesame Street is Ali Baba and Chalis Chor- Khul ja sim sim- -

---------- Post added at 06:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:35 AM ----------

I see Elmo look a likes every where now -

I think our version of Sesame Street is Ali Baba and Chalis Chor- Khul ja sim sim- -

 

[Dance]

Sesame Street beams American dream to Pakistan​

ISLAMABAD: The United States has turned to oversized puppets in its newest attempt to win hearts and minds in Pakistan, funding a $20 million remake of popular children’s TV programme Sesame Street.

The US show that popularised characters like Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and the Cookie Monster is being remade for a Pakistani audience, to promote “shared values and ideas” said USAID’s education chief in Islamabad, Larry Dolan.

Girl power and tolerance are among the messages to be spread by colourful puppets such as “Rani”, a science-loving 6-year-old girl with plaits who is friends with a teenage bookworm and a hard-working donkey.

But in a conservative Muslim country where the Taliban and militants bomb girls’ schools and millions of women live in “purdah”, such values are hardly universal.

The “Pakistan Children’s Television” show will broadcast 78 episodes from September, but in an impoverished country of up to 180 million people, only three million children are estimated to have access to the small screen.

The show’s makers hope to reach 700,000 children and 300,000 parents in total with the help of spin-off projects – 600 live performances are planned across 90 districts, and books and multi-media versions are in the works.

Dolan says the show has entertained not only the West for more than 40 years, but been used to striking effect in other developing nations – encouraging understanding of HIV in South Africa and girls’ freedom in Egypt.

“It’s role is simply – look at the society here and intolerance lies at the root of many complex problems. The approach we are taking here with Pakistan TV is to promote tolerance,” said Dolan.

Rani’s father is a flower gardener and her mother a housewife, not educated but “adamant her daughter should have every opportunity in life,” according to a written brief of the characters, shown to AFP.

The donkey longs to be a pop star, “illustrating how, through hard work all dreams are possible” says the brief, encapsulating the American dream.

Dolan said USAID was giving $20 million to the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop in the city of Lahore, the creative directors of the show.

But he conceded that a portion of the funds – albeit “less than half” – would be given to the US-based “Sesame Workshop”, who would advise on bringing children’s television to Pakistan.

Elmo – the inquisitive high-energy fluffy red puppet who is one of the main characters of the American version of the show – is the only character to make the cut in the South Asian remake.

“Elmo’s Pakistani cousin ‘illustrates the idea that questions are good and the world is a playground for exploration and discovery’” says the brief.

But the show will be set, not along “Sesame Street”, but around a rural street stall cafe.

“All the elements that represent Pakistan,” said the show’s maker Faizaan Peerzada. “This programme is a gift to the children of Pakistan from the American people,” he said.

The US government’s international aid agency spends billions of dollars of civilian aid, partly in a bid to assuage trenchant anti-Americanism throughout Pakistan, inflamed by a covert US drone war on its soil.

But as Islamabad and Washington wage diplomatic battles over the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda on Pakistan’s lawless frontier with Afghanistan, the cultural battle may be no easier to win.

A critical report by USAID’s inspector general in February said such investments were failing to “demonstrate measurable progress”.

The national language Urdu is spoken as a first language by only a fraction of the country, and most of the shows will be translated into the regional tongues of Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi.

Sesame Street has been in Pakistan before – televised in the early 1990s in English and later dubbed into national language Urdu.

But Peerzada said it is an ambitious project for a country with very limited children’s programming.

And he admits the workshop has been targeted in the past by Islamist militants waging war on anything seen to smack of Western liberalism.

“There’s a certain section of the Islamists who feel they must come and disrupt the whole country,” said Peerzada.

“But i think the programme itself is the answer… to teach children in a joyful and colourful way.” – AFP

Sesame Street beams American dream to Pakistan | Entertainment | DAWN.COM