Building helplines and caring for missing children: a community project
Kahte hai dhoondne se toh khudaa bi milta hai: If one searches, you can even find God. Every 30 seconds, a child goes missing in India and majority of them are girls and from poor socio-economic background (Singh, K.P, 2014). Referring to government figures accepting that only 45 per cent of them are fortunate to reach their homes, the Supreme Court observed that; “Nobody seems to care about missing children. This is the irony”, (TNN, 2014).
Many of these missing children tragically find themselves being trafficked to an unknown and dangerous world which is sometimes thousands of miles away from home and end up as child labour, begging, inmates of a shelter home, or forced into sex trade. It is possible to ensure child protection and address the problem of missing children with active support of the civil society, and fortunately there is growing involvement of the NGOs. The present paper described the processes utilised by a team of volunteers with limited resources that successfully assisted 370 missing children reunite with their families. The paper while presenting the broad findings in this field suggests practical measures that are replicable; prominent amongst these is the role of civil societies, volunteers, media, and ICT.
