Mães da Sé: World’s most expensive NFT to draw attention to missing persons

The NGO Mães da Sé (Mothers of the See), which supports the search for missing persons and their families, has launched the most expensive non-fungible token (NFT) on the OpenSea platform. The value of the Missing Childhood token is 99,999,999,999,999 ether, something like $195.5 quadrillion. The goal is not to sell crypto, which is at the highest value the platform accepts, but to draw people’s attention to the value of a person who disappears.

The NFT is a photo of Fabiana Esperidião da Silva, who disappeared on December 23, 1995 and was never found again. Fabiana visited a friend with another colleague, on the way back, when they said goodbye, each one went to her house, but the girl did not arrive there. Due to the difficulty in getting help from the government to find her daughter and seeing other mothers in the same situation, Ivanise Esperidião created the non-governmental organization in 1996.

In the description of the image on OpenSea you can find a link to make direct donations to the NGO. With the pandemic, the NGO Mães da Sé dried up its structure and regressed to the same team of 26 years ago, when it started its work. Therefore, it has only its founder.

“We never believe it will be with someone we know, with someone in our family. We need to draw attention to a real problem, can you imagine the pain of uncertainty of a mother who doesn’t know where her daughter is?” says Ivanise.

This Wednesday (25th) is International Missing Children’s Day. Thus, celebrities such as Ana Maria Braga, Gloria Pires, Renata Falzoni and Taís Araujo will disclose Fabiana’s NFT on their social networks. The #MissingChildhood action is the creation of a collective of volunteer advertisers and journalists, who meet annually to impact third sector organizations that need visibility, donations or disseminate their messages.

According to Mães da Sé, daily, 172 people disappear in Brazil and children are the majority. Even during the period of the pandemic, according to the 2021 Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, Brazil recorded more than 63,000 disappearances. The statistic has already reached the very serious level of a Brazilian missing every 3 minutes.

The campaign #MissingChildhood was created by a collective of advertising and volunteer journalists, who meet annually to impact third sector organizations that need visibility, donations or just spread their messages.