by the numbers

katrina on my team took this one for our "missing children" campaign

1...the number of children in my family
2...the number of functioning hands (and feet) i have
3...total members in my family
4...months i'm in india
5...days a week i'm supposed to work out
9...number of sites help international has this year
13...individuals living in my house right now
14...oreo packets we demolished the other night
20(th)...the day batman comes out!!!

and 30......

every 30 seconds a child goes missing in india. by the time you're finished reading this, depending on how quickly you read this, there will be anywhere from 8-20 children that have gone missing here.

i tried googling the word "disappeared" and the first thing that came up is an article from wikipedia listing all of the individuals who have mysteriously disappeared. the sad thing is that in that list, there are hundreds of children who go unnoticed daily. many of these children don't know how to write or say their own names (often one can identify at least which region in india someone is from by their last name) so they can't find their way home.

you may be asking yourself, where do these children go? what happens to them?

-they run away
-their parents are killed or committed suicide
-they are sold to the circus, but usually kidnapped
-they are taken for sexual purposes
-they get lost
-they get put to work as child laborers in factories

...and many many more things. the sad thing is that there isn't a system in place to find these children. in fact, 80% of the police think looking for children is a waste of their time, and don't even bother.

something interesting to ponder: which people do we allow to go unnoticed? whom do we allow to disappear entirely? which individuals do we discredit completely as human or noteworthy?