Missing Children Europe is pleased to announce the launch of the ChildRescue app, an innovative application in Belgium and Greece calling for the public to download the app on their smartphones and to contribute to finding missing children in Europe. The ChildRescue App will be available both on the Google Play Store for Android and on the App Store for iOS. The launch is planned on 28 July 2020 in Greece and 28 August in Belgium. Other European countries will follow.

Each year more than 250,000 children are reported missing in the European Union (EU). The first hours after the disappearance are vital in the search for missing children. ChildRescue is an innovative platform to effectively reduce the time it takes to find a missing child. It further helps resolve the disappearance of children in migration fleeing to Europe.

The project is funded by the European Commission and the Horizon2020 EU Framework Program for Research and Innovation. During the last three years, developers, scientists, and social workers from across the EU have been co-working on the implementation of a concept that aimed to help the investigations of missing children and unaccompanied refugee minors. The initial concept was that citizens and users of smartphones may become an actual sensor and valuable contributor for the rescue of missing children.

The project aspires to effectively reduce the primary period between the moment a child is reported missing and the one when it is found and to help predict and prevent the disappearance of Children in Migration, by increasing accuracy and timeliness of publicly and privately available information, by performing evidence-based predictions on the whereabouts of children in distress, and by providing location-based audience targeting of mobile alerts.

After numerous tests and real case trials over the past two years both in Belgium and Greece, this ground-breaking platform is ready to become public as an App for iOS and Android devices. Through its pioneering approach and open source solution, ChildRescue can increase the accuracy and availability of useful information to resolve missing children cases by sending location-based mobile alerts to the public, and by performing evidence-based predictions on the whereabouts of children in distress.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 780938.

ChildRescue leverages the collective awareness of citizens around the phenomenon of missing children and tackles the issue of child disappearances by improving the effectiveness of missing children investigations. The application and its platform can be easily adopted by other voluntary organisations and expert groups that traditionally work in the field of missing children, offering them the benefits of social innovation.

Special thanks to the volunteers’ cast: Leda-Panagiota Alepi, Atalanti-Maria Stratou (Alexandra Sougioultzoglou), Danias Konstantinos, Eleni Atsikbasis and the composer, Ms Marietta Fafouti.

ABOUT CHILDRESCUE

ChildRescue is an ambitious EU funded project that aims to assist the investigation of missing children and the discovery and identification of unaccompanied minors using state-of-the-art technologies and an innovative methodology.

The following partners set up the project: Missing Children Europe, Child Focus, The Smile of the Child, Hellenic Red Cross, National Technical University of Athens (DSSLab, coordinator), Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, SingularLogic, UBITECH, MADE Group, Suite5 Data intelligence solutions.

For further information please feel free to contact: Musu Kargbo-Reffell, Communications Officer at Missing Children Europe on musu.kargbo-reffell@missingchildreneurope.eu