Child Focus launches Coins of Hope featuring missing children

Brussels-based non-profit Child Focus has launched its first Coin of Hope (pictured), a €2 piece bearing the likeness of a missing child. The first coin features Liam Vanden Branden, a two-year-old who disappeared near Mechelen 20 years ago this month.

Liam was the youngest child ever to disappear in Belgium and represents all of the country’s missing children in the one million coins bearing his image, the organisation said. The coins will go into normal circulation.

Child Focus began operations in 1997, when the country was in the throes of the Marc Dutroux affair, which involved six missing children, two of whom survived. Public attention turned to Belgium’s missing children, most of whom remain missing.

The organisation was set up along the lines of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the US and continues to publicise cases of missing children and young people.

Liam went missing while out with his parents in May 1996. Like many others who have become part of Child Focus’ records over the year – such as Gevrije Cavas, missing since 1985, Ilse Stockmans (1987), Conrad Bosmans (1988) or Nathalie Gijsbrechts (1991) – his case appears impossible to solve but remains open.

“This remembrance is featuring Liam and, who knows, maybe that will advance our case,” Liam’s parents said. “But in the first place this is an honour to all the missing children and their families across the world, and an incitement to work for them.”

Child Focus has also launched a campaign on social media, inviting anyone who has a coin to post a photo when it changes hands, with the hashtag #CoinsofHope.

Photo courtesy Child Focus