Over the course of four weeks, we worked alongside Channel 5 to produce ‘Vanished: The Hunt for Britain’s Missing People’, a one-of-a-kind show hosted by Dan Walker to highlight the crisis of missing.
Broadcasting the latest urgent missing appeals and sharing long-term missing cases, the show made a huge impact and we’re delighted it will be returning for Series 2 in October.
In the meantime, we’ve been sharing our series ‘Missing Pieces’ on our social media accounts to highlight more missing person cases.
Earlier this year we launched Give Hope, our first campaign standing with families to demand urgent change. To create a better and fairer future.
Some families with missing loved ones, especially families of colour, may not receive the right response during their missing investigation so we asked for your help to ensure they get the support they need. To help people like Evidence Joel, the mother of Richard who went missing in March 2021, who believed race hampered her son’s missing investigation.
We want to see change and you can still make this happen.
In our 30th anniversary year, we are launching our new strategy From Crisis to Hope. Going forwards, the strategy will guide our organisation in our overall aim of being a lifeline for missing people and their families in the UK. The strategy highlights that people who go missing are often in a crisis and face great harm.
Our goals are:
We are excited to announce that we are taking part in this year’s Big Give Christmas Challenge. Thanks to the backing of The Dulverton Trust, we have received £10,000 in match funds.
From November 28th – December 5th 2023, we will ask the public to donate to our Home for Christmas – Crisis Appeal. Every donation made will be doubled until the match fund pot runs out.
Keep an eye out to find out how you can help ensure that we can provide life-saving support to everyone who contacts the Missing People Helpline services during the Christmas period.
Last Christmas, we launched our Radio 4 appeal which was voiced by Nicki Durbin. Nicki is the mother of missing person Luke Durbin and she made the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Missing People. She has been working on the helplines since 2018, speaking to those who are missing, and their friends and families.
Nicki spoke about our ongoing work, as well as the story of Jade Knight, a young woman who was able to turn her life around after going missing over 50 times during her teenage years.
We’re delighted to say that the appeal raised over £43,000.
It has been a whole year since we first launched Digital Search Heroes, our free weekly email communication containing the most recent missing appeals in your area, and we wanted to mark this as a moment to reflect on its journey and the incredible milestones achieved in this noble endeavour.
We’ve sent over 95,000 emails containing the latest appeals, significant dates and anniversaries from long-term missing cases and had 1,681 missing poster downloads over the past year.
This communication has revolutionised the way supporters aid in missing person cases and we hope it continues to do so.
