Belgium charity Child Focus has collaborated with Missing Children Europe to form the NotFound Project. The project’s aim is to transform ‘not found pages’ commonly known as 404 pages into a platform to alert users to missing children throughout Europe. Website owners are encouraged to make better and positive use out of redundant online space.

By altering the code that is loaded when a visitor attempts to access a non-existent page on the domain, they can instead display information about a missing child. Once the application has been installed it will automatically publish the information including the child’s name, photo, age, location and date they went missing. Contact details will also be displayed.

To date around 1157 sites have signed up to the scheme.  According to Laurent Dochy, Digital Conceptor at Famous and creator of the NotFound project:

“The 404-page is a cornerstone of the internet culture. An increasing number of websites designs have customized error pages that limit frustrations for the user. With the NotFound-project we are however taking this one step furtherby giving these pages a reason to exist. The next step came easily:  Page not found, neither is this child”.

According to the NotFound Project press release the choice of the shown missing person will be at random. It may be a recent disappearance or a child that has been missing for a long time.

 

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