Sesame Street Comes to the Region
In 1988, Iftah Ya Simsim ("Open Sesame") began airing as the Arabic-language version of Sesame Street. Produced mainly for Gulf audiences, it was among the first large-scale educational television efforts for young children in the Arab world, and it showed how an American format could be rebuilt around local language, culture, and teaching goals.
The original Sesame Street debuted in the United States in 1969, created by the Children's Television Workshop (later renamed Sesame Workshop) to prepare preschoolers, especially those from low-income families, for school. Its mix of short segments, puppets, animation, and live action proved popular abroad, and by the 1970s and 1980s international co-productions had appeared in countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Germany. In the Arab world, educators and broadcasters were concerned about early literacy and the lack of quality children's programming in Arabic, much of which was imported or didactic in style.
Iftah Ya Simsim was developed in cooperation with the Arab Gulf States Joint Program Production Institution, based in Kuwait, which served several Gulf governments. Rather than dubbing the American show, producers created new material with Arab educators and advisers, drawing on the Workshop's approach of setting curriculum goals and testing segments with children. The program featured original Muppet-style characters, including figures such as Grover's local counterpart in spirit if not in name, and emphasized Arabic letters and numbers, social behavior, health, and family and community values. It was filmed in a studio set evoking a neighborhood, and it used Modern Standard Arabic, with some regional touches, so it could be understood across many countries.
The series was broadcast in Kuwait, other Gulf states, and in a number of other Arabic-speaking countries, and it became a familiar part of many children's routines. Its production was disrupted by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which scattered the institution's operations. Episodes from the original run continued to circulate in reruns and on later media, and many viewers who grew up with it remember it fondly.
Its legacy lies partly in the model it set. Later Sesame Workshop projects in the region, including Alam Simsim in Egypt (starting in the late 1990s) and Shara'a Simsim in Palestine, built on the idea of locally made programs tailored to specific communities. Researchers have generally found that well-designed educational television can improve early literacy and numeracy, though results vary by program and audience. Iftah Ya Simsim stands as an early, influential attempt to adapt that approach for Arabic-speaking children.