Campaigns

From 28th November to 5th December, we took part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge. During this challenge, every donation was doubled until the match fund pot ran out.

Our target was to raise £10,000 as the generous Dulverton Trust were going to match every donation until we reached this target. Amazingly, we raised £10,000 24 hours before the deadline! In total, we raised over £21,000 which will fund our services to help those in crisis over Christmas.

As part of the campaign, our patron Sir Trevor McDonald OBE spoke with Caroline, the mother of Zak, who went missing and was later found in a reservoir. In her conversation with Sir Trevor, Caroline opens up about Zak’s mental health struggles. Things could’ve been so different for Zak and hopefully with the money raised, we could save someone like him when they have nowhere else to turn.

In January, Stephen Fry – one of our long-standing supporters – posted on his Instagram promoting his new thriller podcast ‘The Missing Lines’ to his 763,000 followers. But when his fans went to listen to the podcast, they were left very confused and frustrated when they discovered the episode abruptly cut off partway through.

This wasn’t a technical error but a plan from the start to intentionally cut off – later revealed by Stephen. And why? Sadly, this is the reality for thousands across the U.K. as their own story never gets a true resolution. We collaborated with Stephen to encourage people to sign up to be a Digital Search Hero.

The campaign was a huge success, with over 10,000 podcast downloads on the first day and Stephen’s video revealing the true meaning of ‘The Missing Lines’ receiving 183,328 views.

Since our last GetTogether, we continued to work alongside Channel 5 to produce a second season of ‘Vanished’ , a one-of-a-kind show to highlight the crisis of missing. The show was presented by Dan Walker, and each episode featured long-term missing cases, urgent missing appeals, and information on our services.

During the programme, we received a record number of calls to our Helpline– from people who had been thinking of going missing, from those who were already missing, and from people calling to report sightings and information on the missing people featured on the programme.

This second season of Vanished proved to be the most rewarding and successful with 8 missing people being found and returning home safe and well. We can’t thank the public enough for their support in helping us find the missing loved ones of families who yearn for their return.

On 25th May, it will be Missing Children’s Day. It is so important for us to be leading the conversation and mark this date.

We will be sharing more details about our campaign soon so please keep an eye on our socials and your inbox for more information about how you can get involved this year.