Volunteer Resources

If you have decided to organize a volunteer effort on behalf of a missing child you will need to establish a command post away from the family home.

• The family telephone may be the only link a missing child has to his or her family, so that line must remain available.
• Because of the extreme financial and emotional demands that a kidnapping makes on the family of the missing child, they need to be insulated from the constant demands made upon their time and energy.
• Unfortunately, kidnappers are diabolical predators who sometimes revisit the scene to relive the crime vicariously, so it is important to keep strangers out of the family home.
• This is why you should also photograph and fingerprint everybody who volunteers to assist with the recovery effort.

There is never enough public resource available to aid in missing child investigations. Your best chance of aiding a successful recovery effort is to:

• Responsibly enhance services that are already being provided;
• Fill the needs of those areas not otherwise addressed and
• Ensure that unnecessary redundancies and other duplicated efforts are avoided.

Determine what supplemental services can be outsourced to existing agencies and organizations and what volunteer efforts may need to be created. Your goals include:

• Furthering the investigation;
• Relieving law enforcement of this duty so that they can focus on other aspects of the investigation;
• Promoting media involvement and
• Empowering the community to actively participate in the process.

So, don’t enter into this project lightly. If you do not have superior organizational skills, find an assistant who does and look for other committed individuals to share this formidable responsibility. Although it may seem like an impossible mission, it is one that has been carried out countless times before. Whether you are a family member, close friend or acquaintance or just a citizen called to a higher duty, you will be able to walk away from this project with head held high, having committed a benevolent, unselfish act for the desperate family of an even more desperate child.

Next -> Volunteer Resources (cont.) Civic Organizations