Skip to footer

Why the US won't fund Palestinian 'Sesame Street'

Following a Palestinian appeal for UN recognition, US congressional funding for aid projects including a local version of 'Sesame Street' have been frozen.

|
Daniella Cheslow
Actor Rajai Sandouka-Karim and the rooster he plays on ‘Sesame Street.’
  • By Daniella Cheslow Correspondent

| WEST BANK

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

Daoud Kuttab usually produces a Palestinian version of “Sesame Street” that teaches children how to count. But lately he has had to focus on his own bottom line. Three months after an American funding freeze, his show is so behind schedule that the writers’ workshop rooms are empty, the editing studios are dark, and the Muppets have left the West Bank for repairs.

Think you know the Middle East? Take our geography quiz.

Mr. Kuttab says that in October he was expecting to receive $2.5 million from the US Agency for International Development for the next three years. But Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) of Florida froze $192 million in congressional funding to USAID’s programs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations, which the United States opposed.

Each season, Kuttab works with teachers and child psychologists to craft 26 episodes around themes of tolerance, sharing, and friendship. Kuttab said that even if money is restored he will not manage to produce any new episodes in 2012.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why the US won't fund Palestinian 'Sesame Street'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2012/0126/Why-the-US-won-t-fund-Palestinian-Sesame-Street
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe