The furry red monster from our childhood’s Sesame Street has dropped by Manila this week. Elmo did his first major public appearance in the country when he visited the set of morning TV show Early Edition (aired over the ABS-CBN News Channel or ANC) on Monday (September 18).
During that appearance, the famous children’s show character revealed that he came to promote ‘Spread Kindness, #ShareTheLaughter,’ a year-long global multimedia campaign launched by Sesame Workshop (producer of the 47-year-old Sesame Street) on February 2017.
“You can spread kindness everyday by doing little things,” said Elmo. “You can give somebody a hug or you can help somebody when they need help. It is just the little things every day.”
On Tuesday (September 19), Elmo joined the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Read-Along story-telling session held at the broadsheet’s main office in Makati. The furry creature helped veteran storyteller Rich Rodriguez in reading out Liwliwa Malabed’s ‘Super Ningning,’ a story about a little girl who wishes to acquire superpowers so she could deal with school bullies but eventually realizes that kindness and compassion to others are more important. The event was attended by about 50 pupils from Sophia School in Bulacan.
Later that day, Elmo appeared in News 5’s online platform through an interview with TV5’s celebrity news anchor MJ Marfori. During that interview, the puppet revealed that part of his mission is to go to various countries around the globe to spread kindness “through the universal language of laughter.”
After leaving Manila on Wednesday (September 20), Elmo is headed to Bangkok, Thailand where he would also spend a couple of days for the campaign before dropping by Singapore.