In Belgium alone, thousand of children go missing each year. Publishing picture proved to be the most effective way to find them back. The neverending challenge: where to publish them?

With NotFound, Missing Children Europe (MCE), wanted to broadcast pictures to a large scale by using a regularly visited but totally useless space: the 404-pages.

The objective of notfound.org is to show as much pictures and descriptions of missing children as possible. To make that possible it was necessary to convince websites to turn their 404 pages into NotFound pages.

Publishing pictures of missing children is one of the most effective ways to find them back. Organizations such as Missing Children Europe and Child Focus are always trying to find new ways to publish pictures.

We targeted people who own a website, as well as people who know someone who has hone. We used an otherwise useless space as a medium: 404-pages.

We gave these 404-pages a better use by publishing pictures of missing children.

We used an otherwise useless space on the web as a medium: 404-pages. We offered a code to be implemented in webpages. After implementation, a picture of a missing child gets published on every 404-page.

With more than 13.300.000 missing children pages shown and a reach of 36 million on Twitter, we can state that Nofound is an effective solidarity action.

Just with the Belgium launch, the project reached 4.486.000$ earned media value. And we expect more with the launch in new countries. The press conference generated instantly national press coverage on the 6 most popular TV and radio medias. In Belgium alone, 17 print media spoke about the project and 37 websites/blogs. There was a huge international relay which goes to a large press coverage on TV/Radio/Print and online.

NotFound showed that everybody can help and that solidarity is the most important tool we have.

The strategy was to create media engagement. So they could spread the word and invite people to join the initiative. We gave journalists a newsworthy story.

The project was launched via a press conference on September 25th. Some weeks before the launch, we convinced Belgian biggest media websites to join the initiative. They all joined and implemented the app in their websites.

On the day of the press conference, the application was on air on the major media websites. During the press conference, we explained the situation of missing children, the environment, the solutions and NotFound was presented as an effective tool. MCE, Federal Police and Child Focus talked to the press.