The Harvard-affiliated Judge Baker Children's Center has been awarded $550,000 by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for production of its award-winning children's television show Willoughby's Wonders.

The grant will be used by the organization's Media Center to develop 13 new episodes of their Emmy Award-winning program.

The show, filmed in Boston's South End, centers around a children's soccer team called the Wonders, the players' families and the team's coach, Max Willoughby.

The program stresses "essential social coping skills" by showing the life choice the members of the soccer team must regularly make, according to the show's developers.

According to Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, director of the Media Center and professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the grant will allow the Baker Center to raise additional funds to get Willoughby's Wonders on the air as a series.

"We will be able to leverage this grant to raise more money," Poussaint said. "It is an endorsement from CPB, and we now hope to raise more money from foundations and corporations."

Poussaint said the Baker Center and WGBH, the Boston Public Broadcasting affiliate, are developing marketing strategies to secure further funding, aided by the support of CPB.

While he called the over half-million dollar grant "a good start," Poussaint expects the show will eventually require over six million dollars.

Carolinn Reid-Wallace, senior vice president for education and programming for CPB, expressed her enthusiasm for the program.

"We think it's high-quality, creative, fast-paced and dramatic and is going to make an important contribution to our national program schedule," she said.

Dr. Susan E. Linn, the Media Center's associatedirector, said Willoughby's Wonders isunique in that it "puts mental health at center ofthe show."

Linn described the program as a live-actioncomedy-drama, centering around a diverse group ofchildren and dealing with important questions ofdevelopment.

"We set up situations that will have meaningfor a target audience and explore them in way thatis honest and relevant for the audience," saidLinn.

"One of the ways that kids learn [socialskills] is by modeling, and television is a verygood way of teaching through modeling," shecontinued.

Poussaint noted that the soccer team settinghelps underscore important developmental issues.

"One kid on the team lies about how good heis," Poussaint explained. "The kids then have todeal with this."