The project includes three pilot voluntary organisations, exploring two use cases regarding missing children: one concerning the Missing Child Emergency case and one concerning the Discovery and Identification of Unaccompanied Minors mainly child refugees who may have moved outside the boundaries that their guardian organisations may act.
The primary use case of the platform is the Emergency Response to reported child disappearances. Missing children situations are considered among the most complex emergency cases to handle, given that any delay in locating a child may be extremely crucial for her/his health and life. For this reason, the project puts special emphasis on the Missing Child Emergency use case, which will get explored in two different (although similar as far as it concerns their scope) pilots in Greece (coordinated by the Smile of the Child) and Belgium (coordinated by ChildFocus). Missing Children Europe and Red Cross are also involved in the pilots, supporting in multiple ways the child investigation process.
The second use case, (Discovery and Identification of Unaccompanied Minors) will be explored by a pilot application managed by Red Cross and supported by the other voluntary organisations of the consortium. Beyond ordinary cases of hard-to-identify children, as Greece is the point of entry for the 94% of migrant children 25 (unaccompanied or not) arriving in Europe, Red Cross participates in the project and coordinates this pilot through its Greek establishment (Hellenic Red Cross), which has significant experience in supporting child refugees and currently about 5.000 active volunteers dealing with the refugee crisis all around Greece. Nevertheless, while unaccompanied children may disappear and re-emerge in other countries, the huge voluntary network of Red Cross (more than 1.3 million volunteers in Europe) will potentially support the implementation of the pilot.