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Parents Take Note: Kai Patterson Invents New Way To Help Find Missing Children

According to a press release:

The African American businessman and former NASA engineer invented the AMBER Ready Program after his secretary’s son was classified as missing 6 years ago. It was then he recognized that valuable hours were lost because neither law enforcement nor parents had a state-of-the-art system for issuing missing child alerts. This is critical time as research has shown that most abducted children murdered by their kidnappers are killed within three hours of the abduction. The AMBER Ready program enables parents and guardians to store their children’s photo, description and other valuable information in a profile in their wireless multimedia phones. If the unfortunate situation ever occurs, an AMBER Ready subscriber can immediately transfer information to their local law enforcement agency, media stations, airports, and the AMBER Alert network – saving valuable time.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an average of 806,000 children under the age of 18 are reported as missing or abducted in the U.S. every year. While this is a national crisis for all children, African American children are particularly affected. While only 11% of the population and while the overall number of misisng children went down, in 2008, African American children made up 35% of all missing children nationwide, up from 33% two years ago. When specifically looking at non-family abductions of African American children, ages 13-17, that number goes up to an alarming 42%.

With the support of a $12 million private financing deal secured by John Thomas Financial in May, this major technological advance in the effort to find missing or abducted children is now available and affordable to everyone. A two-year enrollment in the AMBER Ready program costs $50.00 per household regardless of number of children in the family. During the weekend of the national launch, AMBER Ready also secured a commitment from The City Wide Council of Presidents of the New York City Housing Authorities’ Residents, which represents the 178,000 families that live in New York City Public Housing. The Council agreed to invest $1.5 million in the AMBER Ready program on behalf of more than 30, 000 families who now living in New York City’s Public Housing.

AMBER Ready is not Amber Alert, but is a tool used to enhance the issuance of and to reduce the time for law enforcement agencies to disseminate an Amber Alert. For more information, visit www.amberready.com or call 1-866-60-AMBER

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