Missing Children Society of Canada shows off new app to help locate missing youth

The Missing Children Society of Canada, working in partnership with Esri Canada, has designed a new web app.

The program looks to provide further information to the public on missing youth across Canada.

The app provides details on the location of where the youth went missing and extensive information on their disappearance.

For police across Canada, assistance from the public in missing children cases is essential in bringing the child home safely.

“Every year in Canada there’s well over 40,000 missing children reported, that’s a staggering number,” Supt. Cliff O’Brien with the Calgary Police Service said. “That equates to about one child every 10 minutes reported missing in Canada. With these staggering numbers, it’s clear that law enforcement ourselves cannot solve this problem, we need help from our communities.”

Out of the 42,233 missing youth cases in 2018, under one per cent were deemed appropriate for the use of an Amber Alert.

Once a user opens the site, they will immediately be able to choose their region of the country and look at active missing children cases.

Users who think they have a tip about a child’s disappearance can click on the case and it will immediately provide them with the ability to submit an anonymous tip.

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The MCSC and Esri have also developed a map, that can send out text alerts to those within a certain radius of where a child was reported missing, to give users immediate notice for missing children that could be nearby.

For those who have dealt with a missing child, and continue to deal with the struggle, the web app can be the difference between life or death.

“It just takes 30 seconds to go to the website, get the app and register,” Judy Peterson said, whose child Lindsay has been missing for over 26 years and appears on the app.

“The impact it could have, you could get a text alert about a child in your community and see the child in a playground the next day and help rescue that child.”

Those who are interested in adding the alerts to their phone can opt in by heading to the Missing Children Society of Canada website.