We all played hide-and-seek during our childhood, the game usually ended with finding the hidden one joined by a glorious: “I found you, there you are!”. Unfortunately, not every story ends as joyful as we remember from our childhood. The campaign #lostbutnotforgotten in Poland, especially created for the International Day of Missing Children, portraits the story of families who are still trying to find their loved ones who went missing.
The aim of the campaign is to keep the story alive about all those children who disappeared many years ago and never returned home. In addition, this campaign is an expression of solidarity to the families who are struggling with the same question every day: what happened?
The Polish Police and the ITAKA Foundation Center for the Search for Missing People joined forces and created this impactful campaign.
The social campaign ran through 2 weeks in May. The intend was to make the families, who suffer with that horrible loss, heard and to remind them that even after years, the police and ITAKA won’t stop searching.
In the campaign the creators exposed five different stories of children who had gone missing in the last thirty years. Each of the publications included photographs of the children at the time of the disappearance, as well as photographs taken as part of an age progression, simulating how they might look like today.
Residents of Warsaw and tourists visiting the were able to see the photographs on monitors in public transport, including the Warsaw metro or on multi-surface screens and but also buildings and facilities belonging to the police and partners joined the campaign. Multi-format posters related to the campaign were displayed on noticeboards. Quizzes, expert advice and Q&A’s were also posted on social media.
The campaign had an enormous powerful impact on the Polish public and initiated a broad discussion on the safety of their children. Every day, materials and articles related to this difficult and important subject were published. In addition, they recorded a podcast, published five cases of children who had gone missing many years ago with an appeal for help in solving them, organized competitions. The Polish police gave many press, radio, and television interviews. Several hundred articles on the issue of missing children appeared in the national media.
Link to video
