This post is part of a series of three in which we will answer some of the questions that have come to us more frequently and in which we will try to answer the general question: Why join Milkbox?

A few weeks ago the Project Milkbox opened its first forum in which a question that has been repeating itself within our community arose, the question is: Why choose the name "Milkbox"? If you have that doubt or want to know more about the story that inspired us, this post is for you.

What do all these children have in common?

Maybe more than they appear. All of them were part of a campaign carried through the supermarket chain 'Iceland' in the 80s. At that time, their faces were recorded in the memories of many American families, as they appeared for months on the back of milk boxes as part of of an initiative to help missing persons.

How effective was that campaign?

There is really no record of its effectiveness, since apparently no one took a count of the cases resolved or included. Although it can be stated that not many cases of those published in the milk boxes had a satisfactory conclusion, we can not describe the initiative as a total failure thanks to stories like Bonnie Lohman, whose face was recognized by the people of the neighborhood in the that they had her kidnapped. Interestingly, Bonnie herself, could be recognized in the milk boxes, however did not understand the meaning of the ads. Thanks to this campaign, Lohman's father had his daughter back in his arms, however, there were not many stories that ended like this, very famous cases like those of David Spencer and Paddy Warren continue without solving and we know that there exist many other cases like that.

What effect did this plan have on society?

Although the milk boxes initiative managed to awaken communities awareness of the disappearances, it also produced several negative effects, such as the "emotional stress" that families say they have experienced thanks to this, since children and his parents saw each day at the breakfast table a case that could be his, producing a state of general alert, which could be used positively if the same newspapers that published the disappearances in the milk boxes, had given information on how to solve the problem, or at least, prevention tips for families, but the lack of information in the homes brought an even greater problem, a widespread fear of strangers spread among people, leading to ignore the fact that the great majority of the kidnappings of minors are carried out by someone they know and thus, the disappearances continued. Even so, not everything was negative, since these incidents influenced the establishment of child protection measures at the social and school levels.

What happened to the milk boxes campaign?

The system fell, in the nineties, in the face of the rise of technology and the implementation of more sophisticated or specialized systems for the search for missing persons.

Now the Milkbox Project ...

Many initiatives have been developed to try to solve the global problem of disappearances, however, it does not seem to diminish. The Milkbox Project was born as an innovative alternative and aims to adapt in the best possible way to the needs of the community, with the help of all of you, we hope to build a global network of people capable and willing to help, without any kind of discrimination of race, gender, age or social class, Milkbox is being developed to reach everybody everywhere, so here, nobody is excluded. Our goal is not only to spread messages of disappearances, but to help in the search, to provide support to families and friends and to create prevention programs for the community, among many other things, which with the help of you we hope to achieve.