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a kid with a phone in the background, a phone showing the Sesame whatsapp experience over it and Elmo and the Cookie Monster hugging
Sesame Logo

Delivering Sesame’s message worldwide

Sesame Workshop brings learning, laughter, and life lessons to children in over 150 countries around the world. Modus and Sesame had partnered to create an optimized, low-bandwidth,  international website framework, to reach as many children around the world as possible. However, in many areas of the world, access to the internet is limited by local infrastructure and populations that may not have permanent housing. 

a wifi logo and a preview of the Sesame site by Modus
elmo and another Sesame Street character next to a phone with the Whatsapp experience

Whatsapp Experience

Since WhatsApp is the primary rich-digital platform in underdeveloped countries, we also developed the WhatsApp Early Childhood Education Intervention. Modus is currently working with Sesame on deploying an international educational intervention on the platform using a custom GDPR-compliant, cloud-based data delivery framework. 

The framework allows for segregation of both content & user data by country to ensure compliance with local applicable privacy laws. Using prompts on broadcast TV to drive traffic, the WhatsApp experience will deliver customized content and provide an interactive, conversational user experience that can be personalized over time. 

a router on a table

Custom hardware for localized WI-FI

To ensure the delivery in any environment, we were tasked with creating a self-contained, portable hardware solution that would be capable of delivering Sesame content to users that may have a mobile device, but do not have access to a data plan. We conceived of & configured standard, low-cost hardware with a custom software solution we designed to create a device that can broadcast its own local WI-FI networks to serve educational content to families in areas without internet access. Initial pilots delivered much-needed education and entertainment to refugee camps in multiple countries, and got the attention of Intel, who is scaling the program in partnership with the International Rescue Committee.

Webby Award / Web Excellence Award / Fast Company Innovation by Design Award

Elmo with green background and mobile devices
two women drawing with a kid and Rosita from Sesame Street
Quotes

Everyone is so excited to see this all coming together as beautifully as it is.

Lewis Kofsky  /  VP and General Manager of Latin America & Executive Producer, International.  /  Sesame Workshop

a kid getting a photo with Elmo