You may have come across multiple videos titled "The Ice Bucket Challenge’ over the last couple of weeks. From regular people to high profile celebrities such as Chris Pratt, Oprah, Jimmy Fallon and Bill Gates, all these people were inspired by one man, Pete Frates. This man’s fight against ASL (amyothropic lateral sclerosis) began this viral movement. The challenge is merely a simple idea with one goal — to raise awareness for the disease and strike it out.
This challenge has lit all social media on fire raising both money and awareness for ASL, which is commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. This disease attacks the nerve cells which ultimately leads to total paralysis, though the mind remains sharp. Unfortunately, the life expectancy is typically two to five years from the time of diagnosis.
The challenge basically goes like this: people take a video of themselves having a bucket full of ice cold water being dumped over their heads and share it over different social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. At the end of the video the person who did the challenge must nominate other people to do the same in 24 hours or donate $100 to ALS (some people opt to do both).
In a video taken last December, Mr. Frates (now having lost the ability to move his arms and legs and communicates through eye-gaze technology) said: “The story now goes: You’ve got ALS, have it for a while, a long while, but either way, the end is the same. ALS always wins. So in order to rewrite the end of it, we need to raise awareness, money.”