Uber Partners With National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to Help Bring More Missing Children Home

Donated Uber rides will help reunite families after a missing child has been located.

News provided by

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Jun 28, 2016, 10:00 ET

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 28, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® and Uber announced a new partnership that will help reunite missing children with their families. Uber is joining NCMEC's reunification assistance program to give free rides to families who need help reaching their missing child after they've been located.

"Last year there were more than 460,000 reports of missing children made to law enforcement in the U.S.," said John F. Clark, NCMEC president and CEO. "Thankfully, most missing children are recovered, but our work does not end when the child is located. With Uber's generosity, we'll now be able to do more to help bring families back together."

Since it was created in 1984, NCMEC has assisted law enforcement in the recovery of more than 222,000 missing children. Some children are located hundreds or thousands of miles from where they went missing. The reunification assistance program was created to help families in financial need make travel arrangements at no cost to them once their child is found. Other partners in the program include American Airlines™, Amtrak and Greyhound®.

"We are pleased to be joining NCMEC's reunification effort to help reunite families. Working alongside some great transportation companies, we are very proud of the small role we can play in helping these children get an Uber ride home," said Niki Christoff, Head of Federal Affairs at Uber.

Uber first began working with NCMEC in 2015 to redistribute AMBER Alerts to its drivers in 180 U.S. cities, reaching a network that covers 75 percent of the U.S. population.

About the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is the leading 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working with law enforcement, families and the professionals who serve them on issues relating to missing and sexually exploited children. Established in 1984 and authorized by Congress to serve as the nation's clearinghouse on these issues, NCMEC operates a hotline, 1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678), and has assisted law enforcement in the recovery of more than 218,000 children. NCMEC also operates the CyberTipline, a mechanism for reporting child pornography, child sex trafficking and other forms of child sexual exploitation. Since it was created in 1998, more than 10 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation have been received, and more than 158 million suspected child pornography images have been reviewed. NCMEC works in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. To learn more about NCMEC, visit www.missingkids.org. Follow NCMEC on Twitter and like NCMEC on Facebook.

SOURCE The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children