Forget Me Not

Davis College, Mallow, Co. Cork, 2012

CATEGORY: Make Our Community Better Challenge

The Idea

It started with a desire to help a family they saw suffering. Missing people became the main focus of this project.

These students decided to continue the work of an YSI group from the previous year. Research was carried out by interviewing last year’s YSI class to gain a proper understanding of the issue.

The Forget Me Not team felt that the issue of missing persons was largely forgotten by the wider community in Ireland and so they set out to change that by raising awareness of the issue and by raising funds to ensure that the search for missing persons could continue.

The Action

They developed several unique strategies to ensure the success of the national Forget Me Not campaign. They lobbied the government with a petition signed by over 12,000 people calling for the introduction of a National Missing Persons Day. A bus shelter campaign and a billboard in Merrion Square, Dublin, made a personal appeal for the Taoiseach’s backing of the measure. The students designed and printed a calendar of various people that had gone missing over the years and presented this on Ireland AM and on a TG4 documentary.

The Exit Point Strategy was another inspired strand of the project. The group developed a poster and placemat campaign which featured in numerous Irish airports (Cork, Shannon, Farronfore, Knock), ports (Dublin and Rosslare), ferries (Stenaline and Irish Ferries) and an in-flight sleeve (national Irish Airline for 12 months). These featured the names and photos of people currently missing, with the aim of encouraging people to be vigilant. To raise funds for the continuing search for missing persons, the group sold a Forget Me Not calendar and were successful in convincing the supermarket chain Tesco to stock it.

The Impact

In December 2013 Alan Shatter, the then Minister for Justice, launched Ireland’s inaugural National Missing Persons Day, thanks in large part to the lobbying efforts of the Forget Me Not team.

2012 Young Social Innovators of the Year – Gold Award

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