You may have seen your Facebook and Twitter feeds filled with people pouring ice water over their heads. That’s the Ice Bucket Challenge, sometimes called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: an activity involving dumping a bucket of ice water on one’s head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourage donations to research. It went viral throughout social media during mid 2014.
Rules: within 24 hours of being challenged, participants are to video record themselves in continuous footage. First, they are to announce their acceptance of the challenge followed by pouring ice into a bucket of water. The bucket is then to be lifted overhead and poured over the participant’s head. Then the participant can call out a challenge to other people.
Whether people choose to donate, perform the challenge, or do both varies. In one version of the challenge, the participant is expected to donate $10 if they have poured the ice water over their head or donate $100 if they have not.
The Ice Bucket Challenge was started by Peter Frates, a former center fielder and captain for the Boston College baseball team who was diagnosed with ALS. The 29-year-old and his family have made it their mission to not only keep their spirits high, but also spread the word about the disease and what they’re doing to help find a cure.
When we asked Daniel Hughes, president of Abu Dhabi Tri Club to use his picture for this article, he answered:
Cool! Literally…
The billionaire founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, did the Ice Bucket challenge and afterwards, he challenged Bill Gates to do the same, and Bill delivered (picture below)!
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a rapidly progressive, fatal neurological disease that attacks the nerve cells responsible for controlling voluntary muscles. In basic terms, the brain stops sending signals to the muscles, which causes them to waste away.