The ALS The Ice Bucket Challenge or simply Ice bucket challenge is an adventurous activity in which the person accepts the challenge and dumps a bucket of ice water on his head. This activity was created to promote awareness and knowledge of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS. It included the donations for the cause of the disease and raised millions in a span of a month. This challenge became viral on the internet and became popular world over during July 2014 to August 2014.
In the US and UK, many people accepted the challenge while many others donated the money to the Ice Bucket challenge cause – the ALS organization.
Modus Operandi of ALS challenge
In the ALS challenge people nominate others to participate in the challenge. The participants who are nominated accepts the challenge and within 24 hours, they need to pour ice water over their heads and upload the video of the same on the social media sites. If they are not accepting the challenge, they need to donate 100 USD to the ALS cause. They can nominate others for accepting the challenge before they complete the challenge themselves. In this way the chain going on.
Popularity of the challenge
The challenge first came into media attention on 30th June 2014, when Golf channel performed the ALS ice bucket challenge live on the show. Some time later, other TV show hosts also took the challenge and depicted the popularity it raised.
Soon the ALSO challenge raised in popularity with celebrities, politicians and athletes posting ALS challenge videos of social media or television. There were about 1.2 million video shared about this on Facebook from June 1 till August 13. There was a lot of criticism which this challenge brought with itself with people claiming using fun to contribute donation for a rather serious illness.
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge fundraising campaign raised about $15.6 million so far for the research on ALS. A total of 307,598 new donors were involved. Before this event, the ALS has received about $2.8 million during the same time last year.