NotFound: missing webpages raise attention for missing children

In the European Union alone, 250,000 children are reported missing every year - equaling 1 missing child every 2 minutes. In the United States, this number amounts to over 420,000. Luckily, most of them are found within the next hours, but some (or should we say 'too many') are missing for a long time. In order to continue attention for these searches, Missing Children Europe has developed a tool that replaces the traditional '404 Error - page not found' with a picture of a missing child. Barco has decided to participate in this initiative.

Visibility is key in the search for missing children. It is essential that as many people as possible see the posters, so the images remain top of mind. This might help bring some children home. By the way, the action is a mix between recent and old cases, of which some even date back to the 1960s. Intelligent computer programs have then helped to age the portraits so that they resemble what the missing persons look like now.

'On average, 150 Barco website visitors land on a 404-errorpage every day, for various reasons - including typos, old bookmarks and wrong links', says Tomas Vandenabeele, E-marketing Manager at Barco. 'Normally, this webpage serves no other purpose than informing people about the error. With the NotFound-application, this is given a positive twist, bringing missing children to the attention - proving that they are all but forgotten. It is a small effort for us, but might mean a world of difference for the people involved. This initiative - which started with the Belgian organization Child Focus - is rolled out in many organizations around the world, and Barco is proud to be one of them.'

The NotFound page today has pictures of local missing children, both in Belgium and the UK.