I’ll Help: The Most Powerful Words in PR

Online, it is always good PR to improve the way your website looks and works. Always. If there is anything Internet users despise if is horrible and non-user-friendly online experiences. To that end, even legends like Muhammad Ali, hard wired into the canvas of the physical worlds ring, even they understand the value of face. But there’s a lot more important things too, Ali would want me to tell you about one, I know. Help

The new Ali Center website

Sometime during the London 2012 Olympics we had the great pleasure to connect with the Ali camp, in that case doing a little bit of evangelism for the Generation Ali cause. As I told one worker at the Ali Center’s PR company, just the privilege of helping in a small way a lifelong hero of mine. Some things are just worth our best, Ali, and most of you, already know this. Fast forward to the busy, and always overstretched Ali faithful, their latest launch of the brand new Ali Center website (landing above) shows just how much a few people can do. But building a website, no matter how striking, is not what today’s PR story is about. Helping Is. 

Help the Ali Forney Center

The huge storm that ripped across the Eastern United States just before the election. Hurricane Sandy, while possessing an unobtrusive name, even milder than category 5 winds, still wreaked havoc on American lives and business. In the path of destruction was one of the country’s best relief for homeless people, The Ali Forney Center. The place that helped take care of New York’s homeless LGBT youth, needs some caring now.

Muhammad Ali still fighting poverty, intolerance, inhumanity – courtesy Generation Ali Facebook

For those unaware, the Ali Forney Center helps young people on the precipice of utter hopelessness. Youth turned away by the world, are taken in by Here, this Daily News story by Sam Levin tell the story better than I. Even other LGBT centers often put these endangers young people on waiting lists, leaving many to turn to lives of prostitution, drugs, worse. Carl Siciliano, the Director of the center, has appealed to the general community (that would be you and me) to help him get the center back on its feet. I paste below from their website concerning Sandy’s devastation:

“…It is heartbreaking to see this space come to such a sad end. For the past seven years it has been a place of refuge to thousands of kids reeling from being thrown away by their parents for being LGBT. For many of these kids coming to our drop-in center provided  their first encounter with a loving and affirming LGBT community…”

Great people, doing great works of philanthropy should not be reduced to staring at the abyss. While you or I may have our differences, ultimately we are compelled to help one another. Of course Muhammad Ali’s energies and his organizations resources are at work, but who can endeavor at so many outreaches without you and me? And there you have my PR story for today. Hopefully it will be a good pitch to get you to pitch in and help.

To offer your assistance you can donate funds directly via their The Ali Forney Center here. Readers can also donate useful items, and even volunteer to do things like make breakfast and etc. The center main office is located at 224 West 35^th Street, 15th Floor, in case you might want to drop off something or help out. You can also hook up with the center via Twitter, Facebook.

Please, if you can, lend a hand. It’s what the champ always does.

Photo credits: Ali throwing punch, courtesy Generation Ali Facebook