We are excited to announce a new way to connect with you! A text message system called msgbox allows you to text our CBOQ Youth office number 416-620-2946 and one of our youth staff will respond to your inquiry. You can still call us if you like, but when you text it’s just like texting any number; nothing changes on your end.

What will be helpful is our new text broadcast system through msgbox. There will be two main lists you can subscribe to:

  • “youth411” to receive notifications about what’s new info that will be helpful to you
  • “youthevents” that will send you reminders and updates about upcoming events (such as  when registration opens for specific events)

Here’s how you subscribe: text one of the phrases above (i.e. youth411 or youthevents) to 416-620-2946. That’s it. You’ll receive updates from us via text. If you want to stop, just text “stop”.

We tested msgbox at our retreats  during the past two months. It was helpful in our one-on-one communications, and especially for our mobile check-ins. Msgbox also fixed a lot of the bugs we previously experienced for broadcasting texts.

We chose to use msgbox for two reasons:

  • The one-on-one conversations can be carried out by any of our staff–it doesn’t depend on one person to respond. Also, the conversations are stored and cannot be deleted. (For those who use the Plan to Protect policy, this is very helpful in ensuring conversations with others are recorded and unaltered).
  • The broadcast feature saves time for the sender as it sends out immediate information to a broad number of recipients. During our events, this will be helpful for communicating updates like schedule changes.

As we roll out this system, we’ll continue to refine it and hopefully we can communicate more effectively with our youth leaders across Quebec and Ontario.