This weekend’s attack at the gay and lesbian center in Tel Aviv left me with a familiar feeling: helplessness. That awful moment of wanting to do something but knowing you’re half a world away.

I spent much of Saturday scouring the Internet for news and shaking my head. Fortunately there are a lot of people out there who had better ideas than me.

In Israel, LGBT leaders met with representatives from the Social Affairs Ministry to highlight the awful statistics on hate crimes and abuse against young people. Minister Isaac Herzog agreed that this weekend’s attack was a form of “social terror” and has ordered his ministry to set up a special program to help LGBT youth.

Community workers in Israel have already noticed that the immediate and moving response from the LGBT community and its supporters has helped to break the silence around hate crimes – phone centers have added staffers as more people than ever before have gained the courage to report attacks.

If you’re feeling the urge to fight this weekend’s attack with positive action, it has never been easier to make a difference in the worldwide LGBT community.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has an impressive record on working for LGBT rights around the world, including pressuring Amnesty International to include persecution based on orientation in its list of human rights abuses, helping to set up asylum programs for gays and lesbians fleeing hostile countries, and training and assisting human rights workers and HIV/AIDS workers.

Their resources page lists a huge array of national and international LGBT groups, so you can pick the area where you’d like to lend a hand.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association is a collection of national and local groups that work together for equal rights across the map.

And of course there is plenty to be done right here at home. Only nineteen states and the District of Columbia have laws that protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and only twelve of those (and D. C.) have laws that forbid discrimination based on gender identity.

Hitting the streets to flyer or canvass, phone banking, envelope stuffing, or just getting on the horn and bugging your state representatives are all ways to make sure things get better for all of us down the road.

And we can’t underestimate the importance of staying out and proud to make sure don’t lose the gains we’ve made. It can be as simple as taking a moment to kindly but firmly correct the neighborhood kid who’s trying to get up a game of “smear the queer,” or keeping in touch with that younger cousin you met at the family reunion – the one you’re pretty sure is going to turn out to be gay and may have a tough adolescence ahead of him in that small town.

We can’t, unfortunately, magically make the world a safe and accepting place for people in the LGBT community. But we get closer every time we tackle a little corner of it.

Thanks to Kate Walsham for her help in sourcing.