Berger Paints Is Using ‘Truck Art’ To Help Find Missing Children In Pakistan
More than 3,000 children go missing each year in Pakistan and finding these children is extremely challenging as they are quickly moved to remote parts of the country where news coverage is limited. So Berger Paints has come up with a way to help, through the classic Pakistani ‘truck art.’
‘Truck art’ is a distinctively Pakistani cultural icon. Transport and goods trucks traveling across the country are customarily painted and decorated with elaborate floral patterns, animals, icons, portraits, and calligraphy. These brilliantly painted works of art often include portraits of famous personalities – actors, sportspersons, military chiefs, politicians. The trucks also travel far and wide within the country. The idea is simple, in place of famous personalities, portraits of missing children were showcased on these trucks. The work was done in collaboration with conceptual artist/anthropologist Samar Minallah Khan and her team of truck artists, who painted these portraits in the style of truck art with a helpline number.
So proud of my amazing truck art team for making this campaign happen! Thanks to Roshni organisation and the messages on the trucks 7 missing children were recovered. #TruckArt #MovingBillboards #MissingChildren #innivation #CollaborativeWork #Berger #BBDO pic.twitter.com/L0tWqfp1Nf
— Samar MinAllah Khan (@SamarMinallahKh) August 7, 2021
The Truck Art Childfinder campaign launched by Berger paints is in partnership with BBDO (Batten & Barton & Durstine & Osborn) Pakistan and the NGO Roshni Helpline.
Human rights activist, Muhammad Ali has been working on child protection issues in Pakistan for over three decades. He founded Roshni Helpline, Pakistan’s first non-profit organization devoted to the cause of missing children. They operate a 24-hour nationwide helpline for reporting missing children cases and conduct search and recovery operations.
The campaign has been highly effective. To date, seven children have been recovered and reunited with their parents due to callers calling the number on the trucks. More than 5,300 calls were received on the helpline from 39 different cities across Pakistan, of which 725 were new reports of missing children. Besides finding children, the trucks have made hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis aware of the steps to take when children go missing.
This is an especially successful result in a country that has minimal infrastructure to locate missing children. The the next phase of the campaign is set to start after Muharram.
