IPA’s Sneha Subramanian talks about the research behind the characters.

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More evidence, less poverty

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In Cox’s Bazar, the largest refugee camp in recorded history, children make up half the population. Many lost one or both parents to violence in Myanmar, and nearly all live in extreme poverty with limited educational opportunities. To support childhood development in the camp, IPA partnered with Sesame Workshop and BRAC to help design new Muppet characters for play-based learning programs in the camp.

Sneha Subramanian of IPA Bangladesh explains that qualitative research that IPA carried out among kids and parents informed both the physical design for new characters as well as what they talked about. "We learned things like, having earrings or a nice haircut would mark the girl character as 'rich,' an outsider not like them," Subramanian said. "But we also learned what the parents wanted their kids to learn about in the eventual educational programing. Some things you’d expect like handwashing and bathroom hygiene, for example."

Other things, she explains, one wouldn’t have thought of—like car safety. "Often cars come barreling down the roads at high speeds and kids need to learn to watch out for them. We also learned they need to be careful with strangers—refugees are among the vulnerable people who can be victimized by human traffickers. Parents wanted to make sure their kids knew to stay near home and not be lured away," Subramanian added.

This research directly informed the design of the Noor and Aziz characters.

"It was amazing to be able to see something physical come out of the research insights that went right back into helping the kids."

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Did you know?

Around the world, almost 80 million people—about the population of Germany—have been forced to leave their homes due to political conflicts, extreme weather events, religious persecution, or other reasons, and almost half of these displaced persons are children. IPA is part of several consortiums of research teams—in Bangladesh, Tanzania, and Jordan—starting an ambitious set of studies on child development in refugee contexts aimed at improving learning and other opportunities for children in these vulnerable situations.

Thank you for your partnership!

Sincerely,

The IPA Team

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