US funds Sesame St in Pak to preach tolerance

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/US-funds-Sesame-St-in-Pak-to-preach-tolerance/articleshow/10563082.cms

Lahore: Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch are nowhere in sight. But there's Elmo. And new creatures too, like Baily, a kindly donkey who loves to sing, and Haseen O Jameel, a vain crocodile who lives at the bottom of a well.
Sesame Street is coming to Pakistan but not as generations of Americans know it.
The TV show has a new cast of local characters led by a vivacious 6-year-old girl named Rani who loves cricket and traditional Pakistani music . Her sidekick, Munna, is a 5-year-old boy obsessed with numbers and banging away on Pakistani bongo drums, or tabla. The US is bankrolling the initiative with $20 million, hoping it will improve education in a country where onethird of primary school-age children are not in class.
Washington also hopes the program will increase tolerance at a time when the influence of radical views is growing . "One of the key goals of the show in Pakistan is to increase tolerance toward groups like women and ethnic minorities," said Larry Dolan , who was the head education officer for the US Agency for International Development in Pakistan until very recently. The show, which started filming last week and will air at the end of November , was jointly developed by Sesame Workshop, the creator of the American series, and Rafi Peer Theater Workshop, a group in Lahore that has been staging puppet shows for more than three decades.
The American version of Sesame Street first aired in 1969, and the US government has worked with the company since then to produce shows in about 20 foreign countries, including Muslim nations like Bangladesh and Indonesia.

Maybe they should air an American version on Fox News? You know, to teach right wing Republicans tolerance for women and ethnic minorities, too?