Missing Children
Today is an amazing day in the history of the Missing Children Society of Canada.
25 years ago, MCSC began the search for missing children by distributing posters to communities across the country. Today, with our partners at Poynt, we announced our ability to send geo-targeted Child Search Alerts directly into the hands of over 1 million Canadians. The ability to push time sensitive information across the country in a matter of moments will be a game changer the search for missing children.
Poynt is a free app for BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, and other smartphones and devices that uses GPS technology to connect people to local businesses, events, restaurants, movie theatres, gas prices and weather information. A Canadian company based in Calgary, the Poynt app has over 1 million users in Canada alone and 10 million users around the world.
Poynt has integrated a geo-targeted push system, which can push important messages directly to the homescreen of handheld devices that have the app installed. When we say geo-targeted, we mean the ability to send messages to Poynt users in a specific geographic area. We can target entire cities, or pinpoint within 1 meter. Through this Push System, we will be able to quickly notify Poynt users within a relevant, geo-targeted area with our Child Search Alerts on breaking developments of an active missing child investigation, including a child’s photo and all the basic profile information.
People who already have Poynt App installed on their device will automatically be opted in to receive Child Search Alerts relevant to their geographic area, which arrives as a simple notification “There is a child search alert in your area”. By simply clicking the alert, the user’s device will then show further detail about the child. There will also be the ability to then view the entire MCSC mobile site if the user wants more information. Whether a child has been missing for 5 minutes or 5 years, communicating time-sensitive information in a case’s breakthrough moment is going to make the difference in bringing that child back to safety.
To download the free Poynt smartphone application, click here!
There are lots of apps out there to inform the public about missing child cases. What makes this tool vitally different is our ability to geographically target breaking updates to Poynt’s existing user base of 10 million people worldwide. What makes this so exciting is that we’re not starting from scratch. We’re not issuing our own app and trying to build our own user base.
Through this partnership, we already have 10 million users around the world to help the search for our missing children. That’s 10 million people who will see the faces of missing children and be empowered with the information on how to react if they see that missing children.