At an event hosted at The Beverley Hotel in downtown Toronto earlier this month, Lowe Roche created an installation piece honoring lost children using more than 1,000 Missing Kids Stamps. The installation featured stamps of Mélina Martin (missing, 2005), Maisy Odjick (missing, 2008), Tommy Clement-Pepin (missing, 2006), and Karar Al-Meiky (missing, 2006). As participants and passers-by took these stamps, the installation revealed a large portrait of Cédrika Provencher — “a solemn tribute, as well as a reminder of the greater impact that a single stamp will have.” Lowe Roche also designed the accompanying website and activation pieces for The Missing Children’s Network.
“Hope With Every Letter” was launched last year as a grassroots movement to put the faces of missing children on postage stamps, in an attempt to “drive action on behalf of the children who go missing in Canada each year.” At the Missing Kids Stamps website, “stamp personalization technology is seamlessly integrated to let Canadians create individual postage stamps featuring missing children” in the hopes that they will find their way into the hands of someone who recognizes a missing child. The project has been gaining attention, as it was recently nominated as a “People’s Voice” finalist in the 2014 Webby Awards. More importantly, the initiative has met with some success, with two children reunited with their families thanks in part to their efforts. The Missing Children’s Network used the installation as a way to launch year two of their “Hope With Every Letter” initiative, and were quite pleased with Lowe Roche’s work.
“The concept really is ingenious, and inline with our mission. We’ve made a commitment to the families that we work with to use every channel available to us to help them find their loved ones,” said Pina Arcamone, director general of The Missing Children’s Network. “The postage stamp is so universal, and passes through so many hands each day – it offers a way of paying homage to these children so they will never be forgotten. We were surprised no one had thought to use them in this way before, but more than happy to be the first to innovate in this way.”
You can learn more about the initiative in the video above, or by heading to the Missing Kids Stamps website. Stick around for credits after the jump.Credits: