Facebook group for families with missing members

Create a Facebook group where families who are missing family members can share their experiences, grieves, needs and ideas with a community of like minded.

My ideas is to create a free, widely accessible but secure global support network for families who are missing a family member. The network will put people in contact with other families in the same situation. The digital platform will provide them with an online space where they can share their experiences, needs, share information, support each other, connect, collaborate etc. 

If we apply the BJ Fogg Behavior Model (http://behaviormodel.org/), we might see  social change happen this way because:

- The motivation... families can see how they can benefit from participating in the network (... without any risk!)

- The trigger ... Call to action by people they respect, trust, know, empathize with or get support from

- The ability factor ... Facebook makes it simple to sign up, if people already use Facebook

This may lead to large scale social change if we manage to connect people with the same motivation (justice). The first step for people is to join the Facebook Group - and joining a Facebook group is an easy first step. Then sharing the group with people who share your interest is another easy second step  ... and along those lines we may see a chain reaction, when lots of people do small things, one step at a time.

With Facebook Insights Amnesty can track where the users are from ... if there is all of a sudden a lot of people signing up from one country, it may well indicate that something is "terribly wrong" in that area.

What kind of resources are needed to get this idea off the ground and/or support it over time?

- A person or organization with credibility, trust, respect needs to start this group - The FB group should have a catchy and descriptive name that is easy to remember and share - The group´s name and purpose need to be communicated to the people who would benefit from participating in this kind of supportive community

How could this idea also be adapted to work in low-tech situations?

- Facebook is relatively low tech, all you need is internet connection .... AND a country that allows the use of Facebook - and here is the BIG Hairy challenge. My experience in Cuba (2005) and what I hear from my friends who has studied in China (2010) was that access to facebook is limited - Secondly I wonder, how much control the administrator of the Facebook group would have. Can Facebook "sell" or "share" the information about group members, level of participation etc. My best guess is "Yes"... if so, that is a second challenge that needs to be addressed - The up side of using Facebook is: it is a platform that many people are familiar with and use already (which makes it easy for them to become a member of this group), it is free to use, it is "almost" global