Each year the Police receives approximately 15,000 reports of missing Polish citizens both home and abroad*. The statistics show that many disappearances happen in the summer. There have been 2,000 persons gone missing since 1 July 2014 alone. They are often young people who run away from home during holiday. But this is not always the case. People go missing regardless of their age, sex and social status. Their disappearance can be caused by illnesses (both physical and mental), accidents, personal issues and sometimes they fall victim to crime. Quick response is absolutely crucial.
ITAKA Foundation asks everyone to help find missing persons. It is important that anyone who happens to notice a missing person reports the sighting. “Information provided by people often helps us trace the whereabouts of a missing person. Thus, the more people find out about the person, the greater the chance of finding him or her,” says Aleksander Zabłocki from ITAKA foundation, which is the only Polish non-governmental organization comprehensively dealing with the problem of missing persons both in Poland and abroad.
Last weekend (30-31.08) an information campaign started at Chopin Airport aimed at showing images of missing people to a wider audience. For the purpose of the campaign a non-standard medium will be used: a welcome sign, i.e. a piece of paper on which a greeter can write the name of the person he or she is waiting for. On the back of each welcome sign distributed at the airport there will be pictures and descriptions of persons from the Masovia region recently gone missing.
According to the Foundation, the first weeks following the disappearance matter the most, as the majority of missing people are found within this period. Thanks to support from Warsaw Chopin Airport, the largest airport in Poland, ITAKA Foundation gained a new means of reaching a wide audience – people waiting for their friends and relatives in the arrivals hall.
More information about missing persons and reporting sightings is available at ITAKA’s website.
Photo © Warsaw Chopin Airport
Source: Warsaw Chopin Airport