MILWAUKEE -- It has been almost two months since anyone's seen 7-year-old Alexis Patterson.

Friday, dozens of teenagers from around the Midwest joined the effort to locate the Milwaukee girl.

"We're doing service projects, and we heard about this little girl missing, so we felt that we needed to help," Blake Grannum, from Detroit, said.

Grannum is one of about 500 African American teenagers in Milwaukee this weekend at the Jack & Jill Of America Inc., convention, the nation's oldest African-American family service organization.

Blake and her friends addressed mailings to sheriff's departments nationwide, while Jourdin Roberts, other teens, and Operation Locate Alexis Patterson, or LAP, canvassed a neighborhood.

" I really didn't know about it until now, but I have a little cousin around this age, and I wouldn't want her missing, and I'd try to do everything to find her," Roberts, of Flint, Mich., said

Having the Jack & Jill convention in Milwaukee has been a blessing for Operation LAP, which has been having trouble finding people to look for the girl in the last month, 12 News reporter Rebecca Kleefisch said.

"We been going probably the last month we've been having problems with volunteers," Keith Martin, of Operation LAP, said.

That is not a problem they want to continue, as long as Alexis is still gone, Kleefisch said.

Alexis' Description:

• 3 feet 8 inches tall, 42 pounds
• Last seen wearing a red hooded jacket with a gray stripe down the sleeve
• Had two French braids pulled back into a ponytail
• Had on white Nike shoes, a light-purple blouse and blue jeans
• Carrying a pink Barbie doll book bag

Alexis is listed as missing on the National Center For Missing and Exploited Kids Web site.

If anyone has information on Alexis' disappearance, he or she is asked to call the Milwaukee Police Department or the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department at (414) 935-7401 or (414) 935-7302.