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Stephen Fry.
Stephen Fry urged Twitter users to help families ‘going through the worst experience imaginable’. Photograph: Ilpo Musto/Rex
Stephen Fry urged Twitter users to help families ‘going through the worst experience imaginable’. Photograph: Ilpo Musto/Rex

Celebrities back Twitter campaign to find missing children

This article is more than 8 years old

Missing People will be tweeting details of a different child every 30 minutes on Monday with the support of stars including Stephen Fry and Simon Cowell

Stephen Fry and Simon Cowell are among the high-profile figures to have joined a charity Twitter campaign to help find missing children.

The QI host and X Factor supremo reached out to their combined total of nearly 22 million followers in support of the charity Missing People. The organisation was carrying out a “Big Tweet” on Monday, which is International Missing Children’s Day.

They were joined by Madeleine McCann’s mother, Kate, who said the campaign “harnesses social media for good”.

The charity is tweeting a different appeal for a missing child every 30 minutes for 24 hours and is encouraging their followers to retweet as many as possible.

Aisha's been missing from #Wandsworth nearly 2 weeks http://t.co/tSk1KHkd1l #TheBigTweet pic.twitter.com/KyiemE73jB

— Missing People (@missingpeople) May 25, 2015

Cowell tweeted: “It’s that time of year again – missingpeople’s #TheBigTweet. Hopefully we can reunite more missing children with their families this year.”

Around 140,000 children go missing in the UK every year, the charity estimated, and its patron Fry urged users to help “reunite families going through the worst experience imaginable”.

He said: “It is a very simple concept and there is simply no excuse not to get involved.

“By retweeting these appeals, we can all help extend the platform that might bring those children home. Circulating the details of these children through the social media site is such a simple, yet incredibly effective way to give the appeals as much coverage as possible.

“I was so impressed by how the world of Twitter responded last year – an incredible 58,000 retweets in one day. The result? Two missing children were found. Invaluable.”

McCann, writing in the Sun, said: “Every pair of eyes and ears makes a big difference to the search.

“You might be that someone who recognises one of the faces seen on Twitter as you pass them by in the street, or the supermarket, or the train station.”

The charity is using the Twitter handle missingpeople and the hashtag TheBigTweet until midnight on Monday.

More on this story

More on this story

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  • Posties to receive missing person alerts

  • Without you: what it's like to be the sibling of a missing person

  • Police change approach to missing children cases

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