The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Helps Children Experience the Safe Childhood they Deserve
The partner community of Youth Homelessness Outreach, Prevention, and Education (HOPE) Month includes national agencies, local youth service providers, public libraries, youth, departments of education and more. Each organization and individual shares a common goal of empowering young people with the tools and support they need to thrive.
One such partner is the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a leader whose mission is to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization.
A Lifeline for Families in Crisis
Founded in 1984, NCMEC is the nation’s largest and most influential child protection organization. In 2024, missing children reports to NCMEC reflected trends similar to previous years with children who run away making up the majority of cases. These children faced risks including physical and sexual violence, homelessness, exposure to substance use, and child sex trafficking.
NCMEC operates a hotline, 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678), which is staffed by specialists 24/7. Whether it’s a family searching for a missing child, a teacher who has concerns about a student’s safety, or a victim of trafficking, NCMEC responds with compassionate expert guidance. To date, specialists have responded to more than five million calls.
In addition, NCMEC helps law enforcement in missing child cases, offering case management, emotional support, poster distribution and photo age-progression services. Its efforts have helped in the recovery of more than 450,000 missing children cases and have given countless families hope and healing in their darkest moments.
Resources to Educate, Empower, and Support Children and Families
Beyond its lifesaving response efforts, NCMEC is deeply committed to prevention and education. The organization offers a wide range of free, interactive tools designed to help children make safer choices online and offline.
The millions of reports made each year to NCMEC’s CyberTipline, the centralized mechanism in the U.S. for reporting suspected online child sexual exploitation, gives NCMEC a unique lens to identify trends in real time and create prevention resources to address the evolving needs of kids and teens. Also, the organization monitors emerging online risks, social media platforms and communication trends to ensure that the guidance they share remains relevant and realistic.
One popular initiative is NetSmartz, an online safety program that features animated videos, games and discussion guides to teach children about topics like online privacy, cyberbullying, sexting and digital citizenship. These materials, developed in partnership with educators and child development experts, are age-appropriate and engaging, helping children to become more aware of potential online risks.
For parents and guardians, NCMEC offers Take It Down, a free service to help people remove nude, partially nude or sexually explicit photos and videos of minors from the internet. In 2024, NCMEC received more than 83,000 submissions to Take It Down.
The KidSmartz program educates families about preventing abduction and empowers kids in grades K-5 to practice safer behaviors. This program offers resources to help parents, caregivers, and teachers protect kids by teaching and practicing the 4 Rules of Personal Safety using classroom lessons, at-home lessons, parent tips and fun printable activities.
Inspiring HOPE During Youth HOPE Month
As a longtime, active partner in Youth HOPE Month, NCMEC has played an integral role in Twitter Chats, shared educational content and resources on social media, engaged its nationwide partners in the public awareness campaign, and written blog articles on such topics as why kids might run away and what we can do to keep them safe.
We are able to highlight only a few of NCMEC’s many vital resources and encourage you to visit NCMEC.org to learn more
