Robin Thicke, Ciara, Sean Kingston, Trey Songz,, Day 26 & More Join to Raise Awareness of Alarming & Increasing Number of Missing Minority Children
“AMBER Ready Back-to-School Safety Weekend””?Free, Live in Times Square, NY, Saturday and Sunday, August 15-16, 2009, noon ““ 9 p.m
This fall, 50 million of America’s children will return to school. By summer, 1 million of them will be classified as missing or abducted. While this is a national crisis for all children, African American children are particularly affected. While only 11% of the population, African American children make up 33% of all missing children nationwide. When specifically looking at non-family abductions of African American children, ages 13-17, that number goes up to an alarming 42%.
African American businessman and former NASA engineer, Kai D. Patterson, invented the AMBER Ready Program (www.amberready.com) after his secretary’s son was classified as missing 6 years ago. It was then he recognized that valuable hours were lost because neither law enforcement nor parents had a state-of-the-art system for issuing missing child alerts. This is critical time as research bears out that most abducted children murdered by their kidnappers are killed within three hours of the abduction. With AMBER Ready – the Nation’s First Wireless Child Protection Service & Community Predator Deterrent Program, what used to take hours, now takes minutes.
With the support of $12 million raised in a private financing deal in May, this major technological advance in the effort to find missing or abducted children is now available and affordable to everyone. The program has also been endorsed by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) and National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE). AMBER Ready is not AMBER ALERT, but is a tool used to enhance the issuance of an AMBER ALERT.
AMBER Ready, Inc. and the AMBER Ready Foundation (created to provide law enforcement agencies with free equipment to aid in the speedy recovery of missing children) will formally launch the program at the AMBER Ready Back-to-School Safety Weekend at ABC Studios; live in Times Square, August 15-16, 2009, noon to 9 p.m. Hosted by Raven Symoné, Doug E. Fresh and J.D. Williams (HBO’s The Wire), weekend activities will feature evening performances by Robin Thicke, Ciara, Sean Kingston, Trey Songz, Day 26, Brothers to Bruthas, Toby Love and more. Daytime activities will include family fun, virtual games with celebrities and athletes, strolling entertainment, food and prizes. Families will also receive back-to-school safety tips and be able to enroll in the AMBER Ready program onsite. This event is produced by Xavier Artis, CEO, Studio9 Global. All events will be simulcast on the Times Square Jumbo Tron.
