Roma honoured with special award for Missing Children social campaign

On June 30 the club launched a special social media campaign, in partnership with the non-profit Telefono Azzurro in Italy and both the National and International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States, to help raise awareness about missing children.

Using transfer announcements across its official social media channels, Roma has highlighted individual cases of missing children with each video released - in the hope that the publicity generated by each announcement may lead to someone, somewhere recognising a child’s photo and coming forward with valuable information.

To date, 63 different missing children have been featured, with 11 having gone missing in Italy.

Last Wednesday, at Telfono Azzurro’s annual convention in Rome, Professor Ernesto Caffo, founder and president of Telefono Azzurro, presented Roma vice-president Mauro Baldissoni with an award for the club’s initiative.

"This partnership and campaign with AS Roma is a wonderful opportunity that allows us to talk about a hidden but dramatically present theme,” said Professor Caffo.

“There are many children who disappear and through this campaign, together we are sending a beautiful message, which makes more and more people aware of the issue.

"When a great soccer team activates all of its followers in an awareness-raising action, it makes a gesture of great social importance and helps us to find a concrete answer in a time of need. Finding a child would also make it possible to change the lives of many other children who have not yet been identified or found. This also sends a clear message to families to show that they have not been left alone after the disappearance of their child, which is a profound theme of suffering.

"All together we can support the many people who suffer in these situations. Between Telefono Azzurro, AS Roma and the many international organisations to which Telefono Azzurro belong, we are putting together tools that constitute a new model of intervention, which in the future could prove to be very effective.”

As well as helping to shine a light on missing children in Italy, the club also partnered with Missing People in the United Kingdom to help try to find British children who have disappeared.

After the club released a video to announce the signing of Pau Lopez, which featured a photo of Lee Boxell, who went missing aged 15 in 1988, his father Peter posted a tweet thanking Roma for trying to help locate his missing son.

The tweet, which was inundated with supportive replies to Peter from Italian fans, didn’t go unnoticed by Telefono Azzurro.

"Reading his tweet was very touching, because certain cases are forgotten by the general public after so many years passed,' Caffo added.

"What Roma did was breath new life and awareness into the search for Lee, and showed Peter, and the parents of all missing children, that their loved ones have not been forgotten. An initiative like this can make parents feel stronger in the face of this very difficult challenge and for that reason, we wanted to honour the commitment Roma have shown to such a difficult and sensitve subject.”

The club have listed out all of the missing children who have been featured in the campaign to date on a special page on the club website. Click here to visit the page.

Click here to visit the Telefono Azzurro website.

Click here to visit the NCMEC and ICMEC websites.