Missing Children – Twitter For a Social Cause (Part 1)

Photo by Joyseph

This is every parents worst nightmare!

You would never trade places with these parents! Not in a million years, not for a million dollars!

Eyes Of An Angel

We’ve all seen those beautiful little faces with the eyes of an angel. We’ve seen them on the back of milk cartons, we’ve seen them on posters at the post office.

Every time I find myself saying “Thank God that’s not my child”. I’m sure most people do this too, but is it enough?

Isn’t there something more we can do? Isn’t there some way we can help? Help get the word out, make others aware of these missing children, contribute to the cause?

Making A Difference

One person that’s making a difference is Nate Ritter. Nate is a small business startup strategy consultant and a talented web designer, here is a link to his portfolio.

How did I meet @NateRitter? Well actually I didn’t.

I found his fabulous Twitter account @MissingChildren and began following this account on Twitter.

Below is an example of the types of messages that are added to my Twitter timeline when I began following @MissingChildren.

Endangered Missing Alerts:

Endangered Runaway Alerts:

Family Abduction Alerts:

Recovery Alerts: (Yeah!)

I love this idea! I love using a social media tool like Twitter to make our world a better place! I found out who the creator of the account was and knew I must request an interview.

I want to help!

I want to spread the word!

I want to make a difference!

This post is my small way of contributing to the cause.

The Interview

This is a transcript of my interview with Nate. I hope you enjoy it and consider following @MissingChildren on Twitter and encourage your friends to do the same!

Vicky H: What was your motivation for starting this project?

Nate Ritter: Living in California my wife and I are used to seeing traffic warnings and alerts about missing or endangered children displayed above the highways.

After the California wildfires in October 2007 and seeing how Twitter could easily get information to people’s cell phones, I thought it would be great to have these kind of messages sent to the public. It would help notify those people who aren’t on the highways, and could probably be faster too.

I was also motivated because my mom’s sister went missing quite a few years ago and hasn’t been seen since. The technology at that time wasn’t anything like it is now, but there’s still some missing pieces even today. I just wanted to connect those pieces because I saw the opportunity to help people.

Vicky H: Where and how do you get the data?

Nate Ritter: The data is retrieved from http://missingkids.com. I haven’t actually told them that I’m using their data, but I figured they wouldn’t complain.

Vicky H: What feedback have you gotten?

Nate Ritter: I’ve had the pleasure of doing a few interviews and the response has been positive.

I would love to get the word out even more. I think it’s useful. There’s a few things people have asked for that I haven’t had the time to accomplish yet, like separating them out into different geographies.

Vicky H: Approx. how many hours did the project take?

Nate Ritter: It took about a day’s worth of programming, but most of that time was trial and error with which format to get the data in. The main problems I ran into have to do with getting good information consistently from MissingKids.com.

Vicky H: How is the information updated?

Nate Ritter: The information is updated based on the emails sent out by MissingKids.com. Each email they send out is gathered into an account which my program checks. It checks and gathers the information, follows a few web addresses given in the email, puts together a short message with a url, and then pushes that to Twitter.

It’s quite a few steps, but the end result is pretty obviously worth it.

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Keeping Our Children Safe – Resources for Parents & Guardians

1. Get important resources on the issue of Child Identification.
2. Know what to do if your child is missing.
3. Understand the importance of having a good quality photo of your child.
4. Know if your child is at risk for International Abduction.
5. Report Child Sexual Exploitation.
6. Familiarize yourself with your state’s Child-Sexual-Exploitation Resources.
7. Help kids learn to stay safer online with the NetSmartz Workshop.
8. Get answers to your questions about Internet Safety, computers, and the Web with NetSmartz411.
9. Use NCMEC’s Corporate Partner Safety Programs and Materials to assist you with keeping your kids safer.

Please share any wonderful resources that you have found in the comments.

Since it is summer and the kids are home and have time on their hands, of particular interests are those resources that can help parents keep their children safe, contests for family’s to complete together, or other hands-on activities that contribute to the cause.