COUNTRY FICHES

The aim of the project is to prevent all forms of violence and abuse that can lead to the disappearance of children who run away from home or care through awareness-raising campaigns for the 116000 hotline and advocacy activities:

• Raise public awareness of the hotline 116 000 in Bulgaria with the main emphasis from services for missing children and their families and to break the taboo and stigma on children who run away through raise awareness of the root causes and the consequences of the runaway.
• Advocacy to improve reporting, response and support for children who run away from home or the institution in which they are placed.

The overall objective of the Find Me ‘25 Project is to raise additional awareness about missing children and the importance of the 116000 hotline in Croatia.

The project’s central goal is to mobilize public action in the search for missing children. It aims to achieve this by fostering a culture of active reporting and promoting the use of a dedicated hotline. Recognizing that timely intervention is critical, the initiative encourages individuals to report any relevant information they encounter. By emphasizing the importance of the hotline, the project provides a direct and accessible channel for communication, ensuring that crucial details reach authorities quickly. Ultimately, the project seeks to empower the community to play a vital role in safeguarding children through vigilant reporting and effective hotline utilization.

The objectives are:

1. To organize a humanitarian run in Osijek to raise awareness about missing children and the hotline
2. To conduct media campaigns through traditional media channels

• Increase public awareness of the 116 000 crisis hotline for children, parents, and educators.
• Educate the public on mental health issues, including anxiety, self-harm, and crisis management.
• Improve accessibility of hotline services for children, particularly those who may struggle with traditional phone-based support.
• Strengthen community engagement through events and social media initiatives.

The objectives of this project are to protect children against crime by preventing the risks of going missing and becoming victims of crime by getting awareness raising information and by learning the most urgent and important safety instructions. Lasten perusoikeudet wants to teach children to use the EU helplines, especially the emergency numbers and to recognize the emergency situations, in cooperation with the governmental 116000 and the city of Vaasa.

The project in 2024 taught us that small children need more information and that the teachers need special teaching methods to give children the information needed and education. Special materials e.g. how to teach- video are needed to support teachers and parents and other guardians of children. In 2025, we want to give safety information and prevent crime, violence and other situations that can cause missing children problems and damage seriously children´s lives. Our objectives are:

• a special new website www.lastenperusoikeudet.fi with the safety instructions for children in four languages (Finnish, Swedish, English and Samì)
• a simple preliminary teaching method to teach children about the emergency number 112, with safety instructions to follow

In 2024, the 116 000 hotline in France dealt with 536 cases of child abduction (+3,2% since 2022).

The young children are the most concerned by parental child abductions: about 53% are less than 5 years old, when barely 7% are more than 15 years old. There are detrimental consequences of a prolonged severing of the family relationship. That is why when they last, child abductions pose the risk of a definite breakdown between the child and the wronged parent. If a wronged parent was to be aware, or had access to information regarding the processes to undertake when having ones child abducted by the other parent, it might enable them to restore that link sooner than otherwise.

The main objective of the project is to raise awareness amongst parents and judicial professionals about national and international child abductions and how the 116000 can assist in these cases. The related specific objectives are to keep engaging in advocacy on the issue of national and international child abductions, and raising awareness of the hotline and its services.

The aim is to prevent all forms of violence and abuse that can lead to the disappearance of children, by preventing the disappearance/runaway of children from their homes and by increasing the availability and publicity of the services provided by the 116 000 hotline. Also to reduce the trend of children going missing and/or running away from home by addressing the causes of child disappearances and/or running away from home, raising awareness of the possibilities for assistance and the 116 000 Missing Children hotline. Involve children and young people directly in project activities to create a more sustainable approach to the problem of child disappearance and runaways. Activities will include but are not limited to awareness raising campaigns for the public, preventative meetings with parents, national advocacy strategy workshops, and a national conference.

The present project aims to raise awareness about the issue of children going missing, emphasizing the importance of helplines and providing insight into the different types of disappearances that minors may experience. The crisis of missing minors remains a major concern across Europe; thousands of children go missing every year for various reasons, and it is key for society to know the different types of disappearances in order to take significant action. As a first campaign step, we will build a landing page on our website centered on the project, designed with a user-friendly interface. It will outline the essence of the initiative and present the key aspects of our objectives.

Additionally, it will enable visitors to download the guide we are preparing, a document that will summarize the project, describing the different types of child disappearances and highlighting the need to seek help through specialized hotlines during these situations. At the same time, we will distribute a press release to the media, officially announcing the launch of this project, breaking down all key information and directing the audience to our landing page, where they will find the available materials. Following these initial lines of action and once the project has been announced —a process that will take place in April and in May, we will implement social media content, with each month centering around a specific type of disappearance.

The overall objective of the project is to raise awareness of how various forms of violence and abuse can lead to children going missing as well as to promote the role of the 116 000 hotline, prevention and advocacy activities. In the project, we also want to promote children’s right to freedom from violence. Advocacy implementation actions are dedicated to achieve the goal No: 2 and 4 of ITAKA Strategy for “Preventing all forms of violence and abuse that may lead to the disappearance of children or their consequences, and promoting children’s right to freedom from violence” which are as follow:

• Increase awareness of the scale of child disappearances and the role played by prevention also by influencing children and adolescents at the educational and self-help levels.
• Promotion of opportunities arising from and related to the documentation and dissemination of data on the phenomenon of missing children and adolescents in the area of prevention, capture and recording of incidents and responses to them by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of existing laws and procedures of services, including their adaptation to EU requirements and standards, and areas of cooperation with NGOs.

Moreover, operation of an additional chat feature on the nieuciekaj.pl website to increase functionality and communication opportunities between users and ITAKA Foundation specialists will be added. The tool was implemented last year as a main tool of the accessibility part of the project. Since this tool has proven to be very useful and frequently used, we decided to apply again for the accessibility to run a chat.
Specific goals of the new communication tool:

• rapid and direct specialist support
• contact with a psychologist in circumstances that do not allow for a telephone conversation
• prevention of teenagers’ getting missing
• anonymous communication concerning a missing child or adolescent.

According to our Organization’s Statistics for 2024, in the field of missing children, the Organization received 247 requests for support to search for 214 missing children through the European Missing Hotline number 116000. It is worth noting that in relation to 2023 there was an increase of about 15,05% as at that time, the Organization handled requests for 199 missing children. Given the high numbers of the children who go missing in Greece, and in order to raise awareness among young people, the project proposal has the following objectives:

• To raise public awareness on the 116000 hotlines.
• To highlight the 116 000 Hotline not only for reporting a case of a child that goes missing but also as a contact point for parents/ caregivers and other adults for seeking advice and support.
• To showcase the Organization’s tools and practices in the area of missing children and runaways.
• To promote the 116000 hotlines network at EU level.