We’re in This Together: An Invitation to Local Businesses and Organizations

We’ve all become quickly acquainted with the far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond, of course, the serious health implications for people around the world, mitigation efforts have led to closures everywhere — schools, businesses, nonprofit agencies and more.

I’ve been thinking and talking to people about it for weeks. I knew any kind of extended absence of Penn State students would be an enormous challenge to our local businesses, but that was just the start. Now our community, like others, is facing something we’ve never seen, with shutdowns that are impacting so many lives.

So when my colleague Joe Klimek shared this from the Nisqually Valley News in Yelm, Washington, our publisher, Dan Myers, and I agreed it was an idea well-worth borrowing.

As NVN has done in its community, we are inviting any Centre County business, nonprofit organization or agency to share their stories in  briefs of 200 words or less, which we will publish at no charge here on StateCollege.com.

Tell the community about the services you’re offering. Share the challenges you’re facing. Let people know about ways you might be offering help to others. Highlight employees who have gone above and beyond. Tell the story of your business or what you have brought to the community over the years.

Share what you’d like people to know.

Briefs can be sent to me at [email protected]. Include a photo if you’d like. 

Support from our local businesses and organizations has been critical to StateCollege.com’s mission of delivering what we believe is a vital resource for our community. We ask our readers to please support all of our advertisers who make it possible for us to do this without subscription fees

We are truly all in this together, and we want to share as many stories in our community as we possibly can.

StateCollege.com will continue our extensive coverage of how this pandemic is impacting all facets of life in our area, as well as everything else that is happening. But we also want to offer this opportunity for more voices to be heard from throughout Centre County.

We also encourage our readers to support our community’s businesses or organizations in any way they responsibly can during this challenging time, from making a purchase or buying a gift card at a business to volunteering or making a donation to a nonprofit organization. Downtown State College Improvement District has put together a list of downtown businesses and the services and options they are currently offering, and you should check that out as well.

As columnist Joe Battista put it earlier this week, ‘in these uncertain times, we are all better off working together.’