An Ice Cold Summer
In the summer of 2014, a weird and wonderful craze swept across the world. Everywhere you looked people were pouring buckets of freezing water over their heads. The craze soon had a name— ‘The Ice Bucket Challenge’ and the idea behind it was to raise money for charity. Despite the popularity of the challenge, not many people knew where it had come from. In fact, it was the idea of an American called Pete Frates. He had been a promising college baseball player who seemed to have a bright future with the Boston Red Sox. However, his career was cut short when he fell ill with a disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or ALS for short). ALS attacks the nervous system and can cause speech problems and paralysis. It can also kill. Frates wanted to do something to raise both money and awareness to help sufferers of ALS. He had a simple but brilliant idea.
The idea was that you chose a couple of friends and challenged them to pour a bucket of freezing water over their heads. If they did this, then they paid $10 to the charity. If they refused, they paid $100. To prove they had done it, they had 24 hours to post a video of their challenge online. Then it was their turn to nominate two more people and challenge them.
Soon it had gone viral with plenty of celebrities worldwide joining in including Usain Bolt, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Cristiano Ronaldo and even former US president George W. Bush. The US president Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron were also challenged although they both refused to do it and donated the $100 instead. All in all, more than 2,500,000 videos were posted on Facebook from around 150 different countries. Many millions of pounds were donated to the charity.
However, not everyone viewed the Ice Bucket Challenge in such a positive light. Many people felt that it put too much pressure on people who did not want (or maybe could not afford) to support the charity. If you were chosen by a friend and decided you did not want to take part, you were seen as being mean and not entering into the fun. It was also later found that many people who did the challenge didn't actually make any donation at all. One study found that even though over 15% of the British population had done the challenge, only 10% of participants had actually given any money to charity. Other people pointed out that water is a valuable human resource that is in short supply for millions of people around the world. They criticized the challenge for being wasteful of water.
So was the Ice Bucket Challenge a good thing or not? That will always depend on who you talk to.
Nevertheless, for a few hot months of summer back in 2014 the Ice Bucket Challenge brought millions of people from all over the planet together for a ‘cool’ cause.