Off to a Good Start: Sandy Wax, president of PBS KIDS Sprout (left) and Genevieve Piturro, the founder of the Pajama Program (right), kick off the Great Sprout Tuck-In on the Today Show.
The Great Sprout Tuck-In Story
The Great Sprout Tuck-In is a prosocial initiative that extends Sprout’s “good night” mission and encourages families to share in the spirit of giving. In partnership with the Pajama Program, a national nonprofit organization, it is our goal to help ensure that every child has a good night by donating new bedtime books and cozy pajamas to the Pajama Program.
As a part of our commitment, we are creating public service announcements that will introduce the initiative, communicate the spirit of giving in a child’s life and drive people to SproutOnline.com to donate.
The new pajamas and new books collected by the Pajama Program and The Great Sprout Tuck-In will go directly to children in need all over the country, including those in foster care who are waiting and hoping to be adopted.
The Pajama Program is a perfect fit with Sprout’s mission. Since we launched in 2005, we have been committed to following every step of a preschooler’s day — from early morning until bedtime. Our signature programming block, The Good Night Show, helps children wind down with bedtime stories and other evening routines, providing our viewers with good nights. Now with The Great Sprout Tuck-In, we can provide children in need with good nights, too.
“The Great Sprout Tuck-In was designed to celebrate Sprout's core values of learning, growing and inspiring ideas for preschoolers and their families to share together. We are honored to partner with the Pajama Program on this worthwhile initiative because we share the same values and believe that every child deserves a good night.”
— Sandy Wax, President, PBS KIDS Sprout
“There are over a half million children in the foster care system, many of whom have never owned a pair of pajamas and who don't know the comforts of a mother or father tucking them into a cozy bed and reading them a bedtime story. It is our mission to deliver a warm pair of pajamas and a book to these children who are going to sleep cold, afraid and lonely, and we are confident that The Great Sprout Tuck-In will help us achieve that goal.”
— Genevieve Piturro, Founder, Pajama Program
About the Pajama Program
Founded in 2001 by Genevieve Piturro and her friends and family, the Pajama Program has since grown into a nationwide 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization with 72 local chapters in 44 states that have distributed 382,491 pairs of pajamas and 177,612 books to children in need. Hundreds of thousands of children have been abandoned or placed into the foster care system and most are deprived of any love at all. Every two minutes, a child enters the foster care system and almost half of foster children spend at least two years in the system, while 20 percent wait five or more years for a safe, permanent family.