Clear Channel Outdoor Partners with Local Communities to Help Find Missing Children

The outofhome sign was one of hundreds in Texas that are part of the Clear Channel Outdoor CCO network The company is putting its resources to work to help with some troubling community problems among them missing childrenThe missing children problem in Texas really hits home for the company which is headquartered in San Antonio quotIn the last five or six years this program has really gained momentum and we39ve seen kids reunited with their families every yearquot said Lee Vela Vice President Public Affairs Clear Channel OutdoorHouston quotLast year alone we had four children three in San Antonio and one in Houston that were brought homequotCCO launched the missing children program more than a decade ago Partnering with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Texas Center for the Missing the company works with local law enforcement in DallasFt Worth El Paso Houston and San Antonio to highlight missing children cases and post them on digital billboards around the citiesThe billboards are mounted each year to coincide with National Missing Children39s Day on May 25 and then they continue to run for 30 days after that That39s not all CCO also works with Texas EquuSearch to showcase a different case every month of the year And it works with local law enforcement to mount Amber Alerts on digital billboards whenever a child is abductedThere are currently about 33000 reported missing children in Texas Many of them are runaways others are victims of human trafficking Police get calls about five or six kids every day according to Detective Billy Harris of the Dallas Police DepartmentquotI think the billboards are a good ideaquot said Harris quotWith runaways it39s hard to determine why they leave Some of them actually do have issues at home that they have to get away from Others just don39t want to follow the rules so they leave And we do run into cases of human trafficking Our ultimate goal is to bring them all back homequotTo keep the messages in the forefront each one includes a photo of the missing child aged 17 or younger as well as a photo that represents what the child might look like at an older age in cases where they39ve been missing for a while Each child39s image and message runs thousands of times per day in a given market for the duration of the campaignquotWe39ve found that once we start these campaigns they are very successful and they lead to ongoing programsquot Vela saidClear Channel also runs messages intended to help find missing children across its national network of digital billboards including in the nation39s largest markets New York Los Angeles and Chicago According to the FBI in 2021 there were 337195 missing kids entered into the law enforcement agency39s National Crime Information CenterClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Clear Channel Outdoor Partners with Local Communities to Help Find Missing Children

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Paige Albiniak

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Clear Channel Outdoor Partners with Local Communities to Help Find Missing Children

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