A special release of postage stamps featuring missing children and a hotline to call if you have seen them. The release would have to be quite large to accomodate as many missing people as possible. If successful it could be ongoing.
A small extra charge included in the purchase price could go towards funding missing children campaigns.
Possible downsides include the difficulty of recognising someone in such a small format.
Wanted criminal stamps would also be interesting..-- madradish, Nov 30 2002 (?) Missing people stamp committee http://www.mcstamp.org/Lobbying for the issue of a commemerative stamp [madradish, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] Cecil Adams on missing children http://www.straight...columns/020705.html [egnor, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] (?) Myth: When children are missing, they have most likely been abducted. http://www.missingp...puweek01/Myths.html"Fact: Most children who are reported missing are located within 24 hours, safe and well." - which suggests any intensive search should be local in the first instance. [DrCurry, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] More Facts On Abductions http://www.empowere...ety/predators.shtml [DrCurry, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] Aw - c'mon - the whole missing children thing has been utterly devalued. It turns out that practically (but not) all the children on the milk cartons are tug-of-love custody cases, and not "missing" at all (insofar as one parent knows where they are, how can they be missing?).
The most you would be doing is helping enforce court judgments and not actually saving any children from harm.-- DrCurry, Nov 30 2002 Parental abduction is really a civil matter, not a criminal one, that can be much better addressed by checking the pictures of incoming schoolchildren. As it stands, we are swamped with images of children who are in no real jeopardy, while those few who are get lost in the shuffle.
I am not belittling genuine efforts to find abducted and/or runaway children, just asking for some filters.
[I provided a good link before for one of blissmiss's ideas, but that was before she deleted her account the last time around: essentially the same statistics as in your link, but more complete.]-- DrCurry, Nov 30 2002 Stamps don't hold enough milk to be practical, methinks.-- bristolz, Nov 30 2002 Good point: look at the Arabs who continue to get harrassed because they once appeared on the FBI's suspicious Arabs list, but were since cleared. (The FBI has stopped circulating the list, so only obsolete and incorrect editions are out there.)-- DrCurry, Nov 30 2002 A stamp, let alone millions - isn't something one can create on the fly (not to be confused with zippers or insects). Clearly, the naysayers are taking time/red tape/approval/distribution, etc. into consideration.-- thumbwax, Nov 30 2002 Lots of good points here. As UB pointed out, a screening process would have to occur and presumably it would be a good idea to obtain parental permission before printing a child's face on a stamp.
I realise that many missing children have been taken by non guardian parents. This stamp release would be focussing more on those who went missing out of the blue with no accountable reason. Also children who have been missing for a reasonably long time.
Selling them only individually and in small sheets would reduce the time lag problem. I don't think production would be a big problem, Australia post is constantly putting out special commemerative stamp sets.
If nothing else, it would remind people of the problem.-- madradish, Nov 30 2002 Aw, c'mon, this is not something that parents simply forget about when it is not in the news.-- DrCurry, Nov 30 2002 Better to put their faces in free web-based e-mail, in place of ads at the top of messages. Distribution from the police to a mass e-mailer such as Yahoo would take minutes and could even be localized if the kid were thought to be in a certain area.
Also, ask other kids to look, and make it fun. Award prizes -- if you've seen this kid, just click this button to let us know where. If you're right, you win a bicycle or game machine or whatever.-- horripilation, Nov 30 2002 random, halfbakery