Popular children programme ‘Sisimpur’ that embarked on television aiming to turn the learning into more enjoyable experience for pre-primary and primary level children completed their 17 years and going to step in the 18th year on April 15. Every year, April 15 is celebrated as ‘Sisimpur Day’ as it was the very first day of broadcasting ‘Sisimpur’.
With the help of the television show and printed materials, ‘Sisimpur’ helps children with identifying letters, identifying letters from words, matching words with letters, creating sentences with words.
They also use the materials from the surrounding environment and help identify the colours and words through them. For example, the beginning letters of the words such as house, banana, mango, table, clock, cow, tree, leaf, pen, book etc. are taught through play.
Through the characters of ‘Sisimpur’, different elements of the environment such as colours, shapes, etc. are taught. The accurate pronunciation of Bangla language has always been regarded as an essential matter at Sisimpur. That is why, all the Sisimpur Muppets, human characters and even in the animation episodes the Standard Bangla pronunciation has been especially emphasized so that the children get sufficient exposure to Standard Bangla language and can practice as well.
At the same time the dialects, cultures and life-styles of different areas are also portrayed. So, the children learn to show respect towards various cultures and dialects which are different than theirs.
At present, the 14th Season of ‘Sisimpur’ is being telecasted. This popular television programme is shown in Duronto, Machranga and BTV. From the onset of this endeavour, Bangladesh Television has been broadcasting ‘Sisimpur’ programme relentlessly for last 17 years which is a remarkable fact. This is a result of the cordial efforts by Ministry of Women and Children’s Affair of Bangladesh and the Authority of Bangladesh Television and Sisimpur. About 10 million population of the country is enjoying the programme through three television channels.
Sesame Workshop Bangladesh operates all its activities jointly through public, private and international organizations. In the last seventeen years, Sisimpur collaborated with the Government of Bangladesh through the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Ministry of Culture etc. Sisimpur started its journey through a funding provided by USAID and the support from USAID is persisted till today.
Since 1971, the USA government has funded more than Eight thousand million dollar for the development of Bangladesh through USAID. Sisimpur is the Bangladeshi counterpart of New York-based educational television series Sesame Street which is co-produced in Bangladesh through Sesame Workshop Bangladesh.