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For Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, it was truly the oddest of photo calls. Martin McGuinness sat in a Belfast television studio flanked by a furry, wide-eyed purple monster named Potto and a hyperactive female hare called Hilda.

Even his closest allies would struggle to describe McGuinness, a former IRA hard man, as cuddly. But the Sinn Fein politician grinned manfully for the cameras at the recent launch of Sesame Tree, a uniquely Northern Irish manifestation of the US broadcasting phenomenon that is Sesame Street.

A series of 20 episodes of 15 minutes each, Sesame Tree depicts the lives of a group of lovable monsters living in a tree. Beneath the colourful fur, however, lies a serious objective: the show is intended to teach about mutual respect, the value of diversity and awareness of common humanity. Sandwiched between puppets, McGuinness embraced the message enthusiastically, declaring that Potto and Hilda had strikingly different personalities that made a fine combination - offering a very strong message of sharing.

'We have an 82-year-old Unionist and a 57-year-old Republican agreeing to share power, and they have done so since May last year,' said McGuinness. 'If people are prepared to work together it will be a huge step forward, and if we can make that progress with young children, it will complement the political process.'

Fighting the good fight

Sesame Tree is aimed at children aged three to six who make up Northern Ireland's so-called 'generation zero', the first children to grow up since the region's armed struggle came to rest through an uneasy, yet enduring, peace process.

It is classic edgy territory for New York-based Sesame Workshop, the organisation set up in 1969 by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, who turned puppets such as Big Bird and the Cookie Monster into household names around the globe.

Sesame Workshop uses revenue from sales of its signature programme to help fund educational initiatives around the world, working hand in hand with local people to treat challenges affecting children in a sensitive way.

In Israel, the Hebrew-language Sippuray Sumsum features an Israeli muppet with an Arab friend. In Bangladesh, the local adaptation Sisimpur mixes messages of health and hygiene with teaching literacy and numeracy. Indonesia's Jalan Sesama features a family who lost all their possessions in a flood, yet are able to count on the support of friends in their community. A version shown in Kosovo includes a visual dictionary sequence teaching words in Albanian, Romani and Serbian.

'The stuff we develop is educational in nature but uses some of the greatest characters ever developed on television: the muppets,' says Dan Victor, Sesame Workshop's vice president for international strategy. He oversees a team that actively goes out looking for opportunities to put the puppets to work for a useful end.

'What we look for in terms of major productions is an assessment of whether there are young children's needs we can meet,' Victor explains. 'We consider whether or not a mass media intervention is something that can make a difference to their lives.'

In most countries, including Northern Ireland, such initiatives get part of their financing from government money and from philanthropic donors. Sesame Workshop's war chest is further boosted by lucrative licensing spin-offs including the sale of branded toys, clothing, notebooks, backpacks and CD-Roms.

Lines of demarcation

To avoid swelling into an all-purpose charity, the organisation largely restricts its philanthropic work to the broadcasting sphere. 'In some countries, access to clean water is a great need but we're not in the business of digging wells,' Victor says. 'But what we can do is teach children about cleanliness and hygiene.'

There are, however, a few divergences. The organisation helps train nursery teachers in some countries. It has also expanded from television content to print and even mobile phone learning. And it has come up with creative solutions to distribution challenges. In India, for example, a Sesame Workshop project funds a fleet of rickshaws equipped with televisions that can be sent into slums where few residents have their own set.

Tie-ups with multinationals are common. The Indian version of Sesame Street is supported by Turner Broadcasting, which runs the leading cartoon channel on the subcontinent. Elsewhere, Proctor & Gamble has lent its name to shows with a health agenda and its Pampers nappies brand has sponsored the show in the US and Mexico.

Although it tries to remain strictly non-political , Sesame Workshop does occasionally attract a degree of fury. It created an HIV-positive muppet for its South African show four years ago, upsetting conservatives in the US who suggested that preschoolers were too young to be confronted with the perils of AIDS.

At the time, Robert Knight, director of the US Culture and Family Institute, said: 'Kids are being sexualised every day in the larger culture and now with an HIV-positive muppet, they will be told that this is not anything out of the ordinary. It's something normal, natural and, you know, it's no big deal.'

In response to a letter of concern from Republicans in Congress, Sesame Workshop promised not to introduce the character to its series in the US. 'The only negative outcry was here in the US,' says Victor. 'We wouldn't have tackled HIV and AIDS in South Africa if there hadn't been a huge local demand for it.'

Think globally, act locally

More recently, America's war on terror has raised antipathy toward US culture in certain parts of the world, making it particularly important for Sesame Workshop to generate its content locally in order to avoid any perception of American cultural imperialism.

'Our model is very much a local-centred one,' says Victor. 'We don't think of ourselves as an American company bringing an American product, but as an international organisation bringing an established framework that can be built on locally.'

A 2006 documentary, The world according to Sesame Street, illustrated such sensitivities by showing the anxious series of negotiations that were required to get a show onto Bangladeshi television, where the only channel is controlled by the government. After much nerve-racking prevarication, the Bangladeshi women's minister eventually gave her seal of approval.

In Northern Ireland, the new Sesame Tree series has been closely coordinated with the area's educational authorities to make sure it ties in with the school curriculum, which includes elements on community and social relationships. But Sesame Tree stops short of any overt reference to Catholics, Protestants or sectarianism.

'We're teaching kids that while we're all different, we all enjoy doing certain things, we all enjoy having fun,' explains Colin Williams, the executive producer. 'We're not teaching them about religion - we're teaching about culture.'

Recognising the Northern Irish preoccupation with the weather, the show's creators inserted some musical fruit called the Weatherberries who pop out every so often to pass judgement on atmospheric conditions. And although the characters are different from those in the original Sesame Street, there are brief inserts of footage from the international Sesame library, and occasional references for those in the know. 'Potto occasionally mentions his cousin, the Cookie Monster,' says Williams.

Funding has come, in part, from the Northern Ireland Fund for Reconciliation. The American Ireland Fund, which promotes transatlantic friendship, chipped in $1 mn (£500,000). Support from taxpayers came through a grant from the publicly funded promotional body Northern Ireland Screen.

Upholding principles

As a not-for-profit organisation, Sesame Workshop is overseen by trustees who make sure it remains true to the educational mission laid down when Jim Henson created the original muppets. 'The mission of the company was to develop content that could be distributed through the mass media as an educational tool for children,' explains Victor.

Sesame Street has been shown in 140 countries and the organisation has made local co-productions in 22 nations. It is still regarded as vital to maintain a sense of the old magic, however. When documentary filmmakers requested fly-on-the-wall access to Sesame Workshop's activities two years ago, the producers were given a green light with a single caveat: they were never to take a picture of a 'dead' muppet - defined as any muppet not on a puppeteer's hand.

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