Child Find’s Green Ribbon of Hope Month gets underway tomorrow.
“While green kind of symbolizes hope and that was the color that was chosen,” says Child Find BC Executive Director Steve Orcherton. “Back in 1986 when the Solicitor General of Canada declared May 25th to be missing children’s day all throughout Canada, we’ve been carrying on. We called it the Green Ribbon of Hope.”
Orcherton says they do a campaign every year in May and ask municipal governments to be a part of that and recognize the day and month, as well as community members to pause for a moment around making sure ours kids are safe.
He says the latest statistics they have gathered by RCMP and local law enforcement, show that there were over 7,700 cases of missing children reported in the province in 2014.
“About 85% of those children are found within 24 hours and the bulk of the rest of them are found shortly after that. However in each and everyone of those cases of missing children the parents or guardians are at a point where they’ve gone to law and enforcement and they said look my child is missing can you help?”
“We worry as well about the children that aren’t found.”
The concept of the Green Ribbon of Hope originated by students and faculty of Holy Cross Secondary School in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, following the abduction and subsequent murder of 15 year old Kristen French.
Her classmates came to Child Find to ask them to develop a legacy for Kristen and all missing children in Canada.
The City of Williams Lake proclaimed May as Child Find’s Green Ribbon of Hope Month, and May 25th as National Missing Children’s Day at their last regular Council meeting.
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