AMBER Alert Awareness Day Program

Participation in Missing Children’s Poster Contest at Local Level Kids Focus: Bring Our Missing Children Home

With over 400 children returning home safely since the AMBER Alert program began, we chose AMBER Alert Awareness Day to initiate conversations with students about safety and to involve them in a national competition for the National Missing Children’s Day Poster Contest.

The U.S. Department of Justice, through its Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Child Protection Division, sponsors this annual contest for 5th grade students to develop artwork that will represent America’s united goal to bring missing children home safely.

The winning artwork is displayed at the National Missing Children’s Day ceremony, to be held on May 25th. The national winner travels to Washington, DC, along with his/her parents and teacher to receive an award and participate in the ceremony. It is a fitting time for our 5th grade students to focus on this project as the nation remembers two children who represent missing children everywhere, Amber Hagerman and Etan Patz, we also celebrate the safe homecomings of children everywhere.

About:
AMBER Alerts and Amber Hagerman: The AMBER Alert Program began in 1996 when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters teamed with local police to develop an early warning system to help find abducted children. AMBER was created as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas, and then brutally murdered. Other states and communities soon set up their own AMBER plans as the idea was adopted across the nation. For more information about the AMBER Program, visit www.amberalert.gov.

National Missing Children’s Day and Etan Patz: On May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz grabbed his school books and gave his mother a goodbye kiss before leaving to catch the bus to school. Etan's mother was never to see him again. In the months and years that followed, Etan became the symbol for lost children all over America. Then, in 1982, President Reagan proclaimed May 25, the anniversary of Etan's disappearance, as National Missing Children's Day.

MORE INFORMATION
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/programs/postercontest/2010/materials.html