We are pleased to
confirm that we will be marking the event again in 2010back in Leicester City,
England.
The afternoon of
Saturday 22nd May will be the March For The Missing, followed by a
Dinner/Dance in the evening at the Ramada Jarvis, which is in the City Centre.
The Hotel has blocked out some rooms for us at the rate of £70 double per room,
£60 single, including breakfast. To book accommodation, call Tel +44 (0)844 815
9012 and mention you are attending the event.
Alternative accommodation can be booked at Travel Lodge
which is in walking distance of the Ramada. Travel Lodge are currently offering
a rate of £39 for double or family rooms. These can be booked online at
We are currently
trying to obtain ticket price subsidies.
We will be able to advise on the
price and finalise the times in the next newsletter.
The event this
year was a poignant one with some special happy moments. We
do hope to see you there in 2010. You can pencil in your name for first
refusal by writing to us at:
events@foreversearching.com
Andrew Gosden
Age Progression Released
The above two photo’s are the age progressed images released of Andrew Gosden to
give an idea of what he may look like now. Andrew went missing from Doncaster,
South Yorkshire
14th September 2007. He left his home in Doncaster on Friday 14th and bought a
ticket to London Kings Cross but has not been heard from since. His parents
launched a fresh appeal to Andrew to mark the second anniversary of his
disappearance.
Here is a letter written to their son Andrew:
Dear Andrew
We have all missed you so much since the day you left. Not a day goes by that
you are not in our minds constantly. You were always so witty, polite, caring
and intelligent that we desperately miss your company. The same is true of all
your friends and the thousands of people who have prayed for you and helped us
search for you.
If you should ever read this, forget about any water under the bridge and please
have no fear about making contact with us. We do not care where you have been
or what lifestyle you have chosen for yourself. We only want to know that you
are safe and well and to help and support you if we can.
We remain as proud of you as we have always been and love you deeply.
All our love, Dad, Mum & Charlie xxx
Andrew, or anyone who knows of Andrew’s whereabouts, please contact:
Social networking sites are now a regular part of most peoples lives. Millions
of people use them on a daily basis. This gives them a huge potential for
raising the profiles of the missing, however as individuals, we only have a
relatively small pool of friends to which we can send postings. We are
thereafter reliant on those in our network to further circulate information,
inevitably this means information about missing persons is seen by a fairly
limited amount of people.
One of the messages we repeatedly give out
is that
,often
the public are the
key to finding information on missing people. But in order to be able to do
this, they need to be able to recognise faces which may just jog
people’s
memories. In the case of Jaycee Dugard, members of the public knew this young
lady, however, they were not aware that she was missing. This surely lends to
the theory that had her face regularly been circulated, she may well have been
found previously.
The fathers of missing boys, Alexander
and
Christopher Watkins and Andrew
Thomson, thought this was the case and decided to make an appeal to MySpace.
On 28th September, Stephen Watkins (from Canada), with the help and
support of Ken Thompson (from Australia) wrote a letter to Tom Anderson, the
creator of MySpace, to ask a very special favour.
Since Stephen and
Ken were relatively new to MySpace, with no or few friends to communicate with to
get the message to the public asking for assistance and help in finding their
missing children, the idea to ask the creator of MySpace, Tom Anderson, was
conceptualized as his profile appears on every MySpace member’s site. Tom
Anderson has
268,231,033 friends and sends out messages on a daily basis on
everyone’s profile page sharing interesting sites, products and events within
the MySpace World. A few seconds is all it would take to put a message in every
MySpace member’s inbox, with a link to missing children from around the world.
Just think, if even only a small percentage of these
268,231,033 people took the time to look at the faces of
the missing, the potential of finding them makes this a very exciting request.
Stephen had confirmation that his message was received by
MySpace, but to date has not received an official reply to indicate whether they
will do this or not. In order to help this along and get public support behind
this, a video has been created to convey the request in a different format.
Please could you take a look at the video, leave a rating
and a comment asking MySpace to help out in raising awareness to missing
people.
Even
though Stephen and Ken live “a world apart”, they have the same problem. Their
children have been illegally abducted by their non-custodial mothers from their
countries to Europe.
Maria Aldridge
A couple of months back, we profiled the case of Maria Aldridge. Maria went
missing in 1968 in Birmingham, UK from her halls of residence. She was training
to be a nurse. She disappeared without a trace. An obstacle we faced was that
the latest photograph of Maria was of her aged around 9. We have been appealing
to
people who attended training with her or who
may have
known her to check if they had any photos of Maria when she was older. One
turned up this week!
Work had started on an age progression picture, this will continue in order to
achieve a picture of how Maria may look today. This picture obviously greatly
helps in that process.
Christmas is Coming!
Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear that. But we bring it up because it’s a
great opportunity to raise awareness.
Just think of the amount of mail that passes around the world during the holiday
season with Thanksgiving cards, Christmas Cards and the once a year
correspondence to distant relatives and friends.
Well we thought it would be a great opportunity to help raise awareness of the
missing. To that end, we’ve produced labels with the faces of the missing and
their details. What we’re asking you to do, and to ask your friends and
relatives to do, is to put one on every single envelope you send out over the
holiday season. There are two ways you can get the labels:
1.Write to us atenquiries@foreversearching.com(or anyone in the
organisation youknow) and ask us for a
template. You will then need to buy your own labels (we’ll give you the product
code to buy online), you can then print off your own sheets and get sticking!
2.We
can supply you with sheets of labels. All we’d ask is that you make a donation
toward the postage, printing, labels on envelopes. They are £1.24 for the UK,
£1.98 for Ireland, £2.45 for Australia, Canada and the USA. Please let us know
if you would like some and live somewhere else and we’ll calculate costs for
you. We will get the sheets posted up on our online shop, simply choose your
country and click.
Online Store
Forever Searching now has an online store. You can
reach it via:
It would be totally
unrealistic to think or believe that any one of us could single handedly to go
out there and trace a missing child and bring them home. However, there are a
number of other ways we can get involved, in raising awareness to a missing
child.
Offer your skills
- Are you in Media? You could print articles on various cases and issues
pertaining to the bigger issue of the phenomenon of missing people. Let`s face
it, Media are the ones with the biggest power to raise awareness. Are you a
Journalist or a writer? Offer to write articles on various cases or articles
about the bigger issue. Are you a lawyer? Families need advice. Specially where
a child has been taken across borders. Are you a counselor? Families need
professional advice on how to cope with life in the aftermath of their loved one
going missing.
Offer the
services of your business - Are you in the
trucking business - you could help distribute posters of the missing, putting
them up on your route. Are you a printer? You could help with printing of
posters of the missing. You could help with leaflets and pamphlets raising
awareness of the missing. - Web-design? Families need to set up a web-site for
their loved one. Are you a musician? Dedicate a concert to the missing - using
the concert to raise awareness to the missing.
Put up posters of
the missing - Print off posters and put them up in public areas - shop
windows - car windows - supermarket notice boards - hospital notice boards - any
where and every where - this is the key to any missing persons case - they need
to be seen.
Fund Raise -
Help raise funds for printing of posters, for postage costs, for stationary
costs. Funding is always an issue for groups such as ours - fund raising is
vital for success - lack of funding restricts us in what we need to do to get
the faces out there. You could Hold jumble sales - car boot sales - do raffles -
hold church events - donating the proceeds. If
you are interested please
contact:
register@foreversearching.com
All we ask is that the
person is over 16 years of age and that they are computer literate.
