Elmo and friends to visit RAF Mildenhall Sept. 8

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  • By 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs staff report
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  The Sesame Street/USO Experience for Military Families will kick off its 2009 tour with a visit to RAF Mildenhall Sept. 8, and features a live Muppet performance and giveaways from both Sesame Workshop and the United Service Organizations.

The Muppets will perform at the Northside Fitness Center at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Doors will open for the free show 30 minutes prior to showtime. All miltary personnel and their families are invited to attend.

"My staff and myself are really looking forward to the event," said Tony George, Bob Hope Community Center program director. "The mission statement is getting families to understand deployments and separations."

The tour is part of Sesame Workshop's Talk, Listen, Connect initiative, the military outreach program that launched in 2006. This bi-lingual, multimedia initiative provides support and offers significant resources for military families with young children between the ages of 2 and 5 experiencing the effects of deployments, multiple deployments or when a parent returns home changed by a combat related injury. In fall 2008, the tour traveled to 42 military installations and performed 106 shows for 76,000 service members and their families.

"We are hoping to have 200 to 300 people at each show," said Mr. George. "We have had great success working with the USO in the past and anticipate it will ge a fun event."

"Sesame Workshop is proud of its ongoing commitment to serving the needs of military families and we are thrilled to partner with our good friends at the USO to bring Elmo and all of his friends to military families overseas," said Gary Knell, Sesame Workshop's president and CEO. "The U.S. tour last fall was a huge success and further underscored the need for resources to help military families cope with the challenges of deployment. This is our humble way of saying thank you to all the moms and dads in our armed forces for their commitment to all of us."

"The USO is thrilled to continue its partnership with Sesame Workshop and launch the next phase of such an amazing initiative," said Sloan Gibson, USO president. "All you have to do is watch the faces of the children during a performance to know that this is something truly wonderful. Deployments are the new norm for America's military and they're tough on those left behind. Programs like this lift the spirits of our nation's military families and let them know we appreciate them."

For more information on Sesame Workshop, visit www.sesameworkshop.org, and for information on the USO, visit www.uso.org.