BANGKOK — Six-year-old twins Noor and Aziz live in the largest refugee camp in the world. They are Rohingya Muslims who escaped ethnic cleansing in their native Myanmar for refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. They are also Muppets.
On Thursday, Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that runs the early education TV show “Sesame Street” and operates in more than 150 countries, unveiled Aziz and Noor as the latest Muppets in their cast of characters.
The twins will appear with Elmo and other famous Muppets in educational programming about math, science, health and other topics that will be shown in the camps.
They will speak Rohingya, the language of a group of people that the Myanmar authorities have refused to recognize as a legitimate ethnicity. Sesame Workshop has created a new curriculum in Rohingya in partnership with the Lego Foundation, the International Rescue Committee and BRAC, a Bangladesh-founded charity.
“They are among the most marginalized children on earth,” said Sherrie Westin, the president of social impact for Sesame Workshop, who traveled to the Rohingya refugee camps several times to help formulate the Muppet twins’ characters and story lines. “For most Rohingya children, this will be the very first time that characters in media have looked like them, have sounded like them, and really reflect their rich culture.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/world/as...ya-muppets.html
