Did you know that there exist mobile apps that can help trace missing children? No? Now you know.
The rate at which missing children alerts have been circulating online is alarming.
Some are found after days of distress, others are never found, while others are sadly found dead.
Parents and guardians go through horror and stress when their child goes missing.
Technology is here to help. You can now track children’s whereabouts. And it has been proven to be effective.
In China, a mobile phone app has helped locate hundreds of missing children. Xinhua News agency reported that the Chinese authorities used the app to recover 611 children.
China is one of the countries affected by child trafficking cases; hence, this is one of the best child tracker apps.
How does the app work? Well, the one launched by the Chinese authorities encourage witnesses to report the location of missing children.
Push notifications are sent to users near where the child was last seen and this is inclusive of photos and descriptions.
Kid Tracker Apps Made in Kenya
Efforts to develop an app that can track a child have also been witnessed in Kenya.
In 2016, Ovin Owiti and George Kilibwa of Mwana Systems came up with a solution to track children’s location. They collaborated with two other developers, a French and Kenyan, to come up with an app that tracks a child’s whereabouts.
The tracking starts from the moment they board the school bus to and from school. This is one of the few child tracker apps in Kenya.
The app allows up to 4 text messages to be sent to parents.
The text comes with the bus’s registration details and is sent once the child boards and alights from the bus in the morning and evening.
This app is specifically developed to track the school bus.
How does the Mwana-Trac app work? Each child gets a wristband and a digital tag is placed in their bags just in case either is lost.
The bus driver also gets a Mwana reader that he or she uses to swipe the wristband or digital tag whenever the child boards or alights from the school bus. The device then sends an SMS notification to the parent.
Currently, the app is sold through schools.
The problem is that cases of lost children do not always happen on route to or from school. In some cases, children disappear from home or while playing with their peers.
While the Mwana Systems solves part of the problem, there is a need to have an all-inclusive app that will track children whenever they are.
The good news is that the app store has some child- tracking apps that can help solve the problem.
Some apps such as Find My Kids, Children Tracking, and Family safety-Child Tracker have been developed to solve the problem of locating lost children.
LG has also ventured into this business by launching a wearable wristband called KizON that can help a parent track the location of their children via GPS and Wi-Fi.
A GPS child tracker for Android is a good idea since Android platforms are affordable.
This device is specifically designed for children in primary school and lower levels of learning.
It helps parents monitor their children by sending real-time location information.
Some of its key features are 64MB RAM, 400mAH battery, 2G/3G network, and comes in three colors: blue, pink, and green.
This app is available on play store.
Final Thoughts?
We are living at a time when reports of missing children are increasing by the day; hence, tracking apps are an important invention.
However, more work remains to be done.
We can also only hope that there will be a free app to track your child in the future or one that requires a one-off payment without renewal fees.
We look forward to a better and improved app to track a child as we will have solved a very big problem facing many parents in Kenya.
