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Project Sponsors
The Child Project™ Principals
The Child Project™ is a collaborative effort between the Nation's Missing Children Organization (NMCO) and The CHILD Project, LLC to create a nationwide Children's Identification and Location Database, which utilizes iris recognition biometric technology.
For more information about Iridian Technologies please visit their web site at www.iridiantech.com.
For more information about Panasonic Security Systems please visit their web site at www.panasonic.com/irisreader.
The Nation's Missing Children Organization (NMCO) and National Center for Missing Adults (NCMA) - www.theyaremissed.org is a nonprofit agency providing nationwide assistance to law enforcement and families of missing persons. The agency, headquartered in Phoenix, AZ, was founded in 1994 by Kym Pasqualini who, at the age of eight, survived an attempted abduction by a knife-wielding stranger. The group provides a variety of services including advocacy, search assistance, national distribution of information related to missing persons and various programs addressing child safety such as the child ID program. NMCO acts as a clearinghouse of information and does not provide investigative services or employ private investigators.
Kym Pasqualini is a former member of the Association for Missing & Exploited Children's Organizations (AMECO) Board of Directors and also served as Chairman of the Government Relations Committee and Co-Chairman of the Ethics /Membership Committee.
Over the last ten years the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has provided training, technical assistance and mentorship to the group's founder, Kym Pasqualini, in her effort to establish the first national clearinghouse for missing adults. As an organization whose mandate extends only to the search for missing children, NCMEC can offer little or no assistance to those desperately searching for someone who disappeared at the age of eighteen or older.
In 1995 NMCO expanded its charter to include services to missing persons over the age of eighteen and quickly identified that missing adults and their families were a segment of the victim population that has been under-served. In 1996 NMCO brought these concerns to Congress in a request for federal funding to establish the first national clearinghouse for missing adults. In July 2002, the United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance granted $1,575,000.00 to NMCO to establish the National Center for Missing Adults, the first national clearinghouse for missing adults providing services and advocacy to families of missing persons. The agency is dedicated to the prevention of abduction and the safe recovery of missing adults with primary focus on adults determined by law enforcement to be endangered due to foul play, diminished mental capacity, physical disability, or suspicious circumstances.
The National Center for Missing Adults is working to address the issues affecting the adult segment of the adult victim population and serves as a national repository of information accessible to the law enforcement, medical examiners, social service and advocacy groups, and the general public. The National Center for Missing Adults in a partnership with Fox Valley Technical College and the Bureau of Justice Assistance is working to provide training to law enforcement agencies throughout the country and promote and provide advocacy services for the victim families.
For more information about the Nation's Missing Children Organization (NMCO) and The Child Project™, please contact Kym L. Pasqualini, Chief Executive Officer, at 602-944-1768.
For more information about The Child Project™, please contact Kevin O'Reilly, Director of Communications, at 800-479-1621, extension 318.