The Ananda Alert system was borne out of the unfortunate 2008 kidnapping and subsequent murder of 11-year-old Ananda Dean. In 2009, the Government of Jamaica entrusted the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development with the responsibility of operating this national response to the spate of reports of missing children at that time.

The system replaced Red Alert, which required parents/guardians to wait 24 hours before being able to report the disappearance of their child/ward. This priority action was in tandem with the Government’s commitment to ensure the care and protection of our nation’s children. With the Ananda Alert system, parents/guardians can immediately make a report, regardless of the time which would have elapsed since their child’s disappearance.

On March 1, 2013, the Office of the Children’s Registry (OCR) acquired the system and has been operating it to date. The effective management of the Ananda Alert system by the OCR, in conjunction with the Missing Person Monitoring Unit and Corporate Communications Unit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), has yielded significant results despite tight budgetary and human resource constraints faced by the police force and the Ananda Alert Secretariat.

The Ananda Alert Secretariat successfully hosted a series of missing children fora in Kingston, Trelawny and St Mary in an effort to foster awareness among students as well as to empower student representatives to create intervention activities to mitigate against child disappearances within their schools, with the support of the registry.

The secretariat has also participated in over 100 public education activities including school tours, community/town hall meetings and sensitisation sessions. We have been active participants in the Caribbean Child Research Conference, Unite For Change Forum on Violence Prevention, RJR Communications Group Cross Country Invasion and SDC T-20 Cricket competition, as we continue to educate at all levels, including a grass roots focus.

Public awareness messages on the importance of protecting children from abuse and encouraging persons to report to the OCR were broadcast on television and radio to coincide with the back-to-school period.

The OCR published the first Search and Rescue Protocol in 2014 and conducted 10 search and rescue training sessions through the Caribbean Search Centre of the JCF to over 150 volunteers in St James, Trelawny, St Ann, St Thomas, Westmoreland and St Catherine between 2014 and 2015. These parishes were selected based on the high volume of missing children reports received from them. These volunteers are in the process of receiving training in first aid from the Jamaica Fire Brigade to further assist in what will become planned search and rescue operations in these parishes.

Further to these activities, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), a long-standing partner of the OCR which facilitated the printing of these protocols and funding of the training, donated six computer units and printers which were handed over to the Jamaica Library Service (JLS) on March 3, 2015. The OCR’s partnership with the JLS has resulted in the dissemination of Ananda Alert information in parish library networks, mobile libraries and school libraries under the portfolio of the JLS, and as authorised by the school principals.

In April and June 2015 respectively, memoranda of understandings were signed with Cabletron Network Systems Limited and RJR Communications Group, respectively, to further streamline the information being broadcast on the cable and communication networks. These partnerships have, so far, been fruitful.

It is important for the public to collaborate with the OCR, JCF and all partners involved in the Ananda Alert system. Recovering missing children, like the reporting of child abuse, heavily depends on public support and will only work if people share the information they know. Photographs of missing children are published weekly by the Jamaica Observer and can also be seen on select digital screens across the island in pharmacies and Western Union outlets and can also be found on the OCR website (ocr.gov.jm) or Facebook page of the Children’s Registry. Be the Change: Help us bring our children home.