Friends From Sesame Street to Visit McConnell on Saturday, July 24

The Sesame Street/USO Experience for Military Families is a FREE, 25-minute show created just for military families! Shows are at 10am and 1pm in the Dole Community Center Ballroom. Doors open 30 minutes prior to show.


The show is designed to address the concerns of military families dealing with deployments and the associated hardships. It features Elmo, Grover, Cookie Monster, Rosita and Zoe singing and dancing and touches on how to cope when a parent or other relative is far from home.

The Sesame Street/USO Experience for Military Families is the latest project in the “Talk, Listen, Connect” initiative, which Sesame Workshop launched in 2006. The initiative provides support and resources for military families with young children who are experiencing the effects of deployment, multiple deployments or when a parent comes home injured.

“What we bring military children is an opportunity to take a break from their daily challenges,” says Lynn Chwatsky, Sesame Workshop’s Senior Director for Outreach Initiatives and Partners. “We know how hard it is to be in a military family. We know they’re constantly facing transitions, such as getting ready for deployment and homecomings. Some of their moms or dads are on their third or fourth deployment. Some parents are coming home changed. We want to get children singing and dancing.”

To date, the tour is the longest-running entertainment tour in USO history and the first-ever traveling USO tour designed specifically for military families. The tour has been traveling around the world for more than two consecutive years and bringing smiles to more than 150,000 service members and military families.