Sesame Street refutes the stereotype of diplomacy being the sole provenance of men in suits strategizing over how to win the hearts and minds of a foreign adult populace. Anyone who has watched the wildly popular 40 year old show knows that its target audience is under four feet tall and the most memorable characters are puppets and an eight foot tall yellow bird.

It’s easy to say that Sesame Street has universal appeal when you consider that it is aired in over 120 countries. But in fact, it’s tailored to take into account different geography and culture, with nearly 30 international co-productions. Sesame Workshop, the non-profit producer of the show, also counts as its sponsors, corporations such as McDonalds and governmental agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development, the Education Department and the Defense Department. It also receives international funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sesame Street made the news, and some waves, in 2002 when it debuted Kami, an HIV-positive muppet in its South African version of the show. As recounted in a September 2002 Time Magazine article, AIDS affected almost one in nine South Africans and a major stigma was associated with it. Kami – whose name is the Tswana tribal word for “acceptance” – was created as a “perky, fun-loving and healthy HIV-positive character with a wealth of information about HIV/AIDS to share with her inquisitive friends.”

Her character was intended to challenge the stereotype of the sickly child and, the article noted, “She will also introduce basic information and promote discussion about such uncuddly issues as death and social ostracism. In an episode next month, Kami has to deal with rejection at school because of her condition. Kami wins over her classmates, teaching the other children a lesson in tolerance and understanding of her sickness. ‘Kami is no outcast — far from it,’ says [Britain, the production manager of Takalani Sesame]. ‘She’s lovable, and she’s loved.’”

South Africa isn’t the only country to navigate sensitive social and political issues in its programming. The New York Times Magazine has a lengthy and interesting article by Samantha A. Shapiro this week about Shara’a Simsim, the Palestinian version of Sesame Street.

As it notes:

“But in each co-production, at least in its early years, every detail — every character, every scene and every line of script — must be approved by executives in the Sesame Workshop office, near Lincoln Center. This requires a delicate balance: how to promote the ‘core values’ of Sesame Street, like optimism and tolerance, while at the same time portraying a version of local life realistic enough that broadcasters will show it and parents will let their kids watch. The Palestinian territories have been, not surprisingly, a tough place to strike this balance, Sesame executives say, rivaled only by Kosovo.”

Sesame Street isn’t the only Palestinian children’s show trying to promote particular values:

“The official Hamas channel, Al-Aqsa television, has several children’s shows, and Al-Aqsa’s director of children’s programming, Abu Amr, told me the network is considering starting a station devoted entirely to children. Al-Aqsa TV’s most famous (and infamous) children’s program is “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” in which Saraa, a Palestinian girl, and several animal characters teach ideological lessons: why it is bad to speak English and good to memorize the whole Koran; how the Danes are infidels who should be killed. Occasionally an animal character will die as a martyr for Palestine.”

Initially, the Palestinian version of Sesame Street was a joint production with Israeli Educational TV, but the process of agreeing on even minor details was arduous. There were disagreements over where the Israeli and Palestinian Muppets should meet – a neutral third area? a park divided by a low wall? – with the eventual decision that they would visit each other on their own streets.

“They finally agreed that the Muppets would visit one another’s streets rather than meet in a park. But again, controversy arose: the Israelis were in favor of spontaneous Muppet drop-bys, but the Palestinians insisted the visits had to be by invitation only. ‘The only Israelis who come to Palestinian neighborhoods uninvited are settlers,’ Kuttab explained to me.”

Eventually, after the second intifada in Sept. 2000 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the productions stopped creating segments featuring Israeli and Palestinian characters. The plan was instead that Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli shows would independently shoot their own programs but show about 10 segments from the other productions, redubbed into Hebrew or Arabic. But while the Israeli version lived up to the plan, the Palestinians only showed a handful of Israeli segments and the Jordanians none.

The latest incarnation of the Palestinian show, called “Shara’a Simsim” was first broadcast in 2007 and does not include any Israeli segments.

The article also has some interesting notes about Layla Sayegh, the supervisor of the day-to-day operations of “Simsim.”

Sayegh’s previous job has spent three decades working for the Palestinian Liberation Organization and her job just prior to “Simsim” was working in the prime minister’s office for the Palestinian Authority.

“I had thought that, like Nuseibeh, Sayegh would want Palestinian kids to be educated early about their political situation. But when I asked Sayegh about this, she said that working at ‘Simsim,’ as apolitical as it tried to be, was a way of serving the Palestinian people as much as her previous job in the prime minister’s office was. ‘In government, there are issues you can’t change because of which party’s in power,’ she said. ‘But here I feel very effective.’

“WHEN I ASKED Sayegh exactly how producing a fledgling puppet show was more effective than working for the prime minister, she told me about Muppet ‘walkarounds.’ Every few months, ‘Simsim’ brings human-size versions of the Palestinian Muppets to schools to publicize the show and to promote early-childhood education. ‘I sit and I look back at the eyes of the kids,’ Sayegh told me. ‘They suffer a lot, and during the show I can see how happy they get. I would like to do these shows twice a day, every day, in every village in Palestine.’

“I went with her one afternoon to a Muppet walkaround held at Al Ahli college, a Catholic school with the largest auditorium in Ramallah. Mini-buses from Ramallah’s preschools pulled into the courtyard and unloaded hundreds of 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, clad in sweaters or plaid jumpers emblazoned with their school logo. Their teachers herded them into the auditorium, where an actor and an actress appeared onstage in brightly colored overalls and performed a little skit. Then the actors called for the life-size Muppets to come out, and a wave of excitement swept through the room….

“Sayegh was facing the kids, just as she had described, and I turned around to look at what she found more important than working with the prime minister. The view from where she stood was a bobbing sea of hundreds of preschoolers, their open faces transparent with delight, excited to see what would happen next.”