Missing People has announced a new partnership with delivery company Palmer and Harvey, which will see appeals for missing persons displayed on the side of all of the company’s delivery vans.
The charity announced the new ‘Delivering Hope’ partnership today, and said it would “raise the profile of missing people from across the country”, as Palmer and Harvey vans “deliver goods daily to local shops in every UK mainland postcode”.
A spokeswoman for Palmer and Harvey said the company had also committed to a £1m funding target over the next three years.
Delivery vans will display appeals for specific missing people around the communities and areas where they were last seen; including that of Luke Durbin (pictured above) who has been missing from his home in Suffolk for the last 11 years.
According to the charity, 240,000 people are reported missing the UK every year. The partnership with Palmer and Harvey, the 5th largest private company in the UK, will “help extend the visibility of Missing People’s efforts to find a missing person or encourage a member of the public to come forward with new information”.
According to a spokeswoman from Palmer and Harvey, the wholesaler approached Missing People with the idea on how “space on its delivery vehicles could be used for a social purpose, given their presence in towns, villages and urban centres across the UK”.
She said this was the beginning of a “long-term partnership” between the charity and the wholesale deliverer, which employs over 4,000 staff across the UK.
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Jo Youle, chief executive of Missing People, said: “When someone is missing it is almost always a sign that something is seriously wrong. One of the charity’s key focuses is to appeal to a missing person to let them know that we are here to give them, as well as asking the public to share vital information.
“The new Delivering Hope campaign will be instrumental in helping us extend the reach of our publicity appeals and we really hope it will play a role in reuniting missing people with their loved ones.”
Martyn Ward, managing director of Palmer and Harvey, said the exterior of the company’s vans were “effectively a blank canvas that could be used to grab people’s attention and help those in the communities we serve”.
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