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Sunday, August 24, 2014

Why Should Celebrities Do The Ice Bucket Challenge?

Hey, Katherine here. Restarting the blog again, so hey. Anyway, I'd like to post about something I noticed the past week: the ice bucket challenge. If you have a facebook or an instagram, I'm sure this showed up at least once in your feed the past week. But for those of you "friend"-less people, I'll give you a quick rundown on what the ice bucket challenge is:

The Ice Bucket Challenge helps raise awareness for ALS victims. ALS is a disease that affects your nerve cells and brain. The ALS Association website (alsa.org) says:

"Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed."

Basically, the Ice Bucket Challenge involves a person filming a video of themselves completing the challenge, which is dumping a bucket of ice water over their head. They then post the video on their social media account, nominating several friends. You have twenty-four hours to complete the challenge if you were nominated. (I was nominated, and ran out of time. Oops.) If you do not complete the challenge, you have to donate $100 to the ALS association. If you complete the challenge, you are also supposed to give $10 to the ALS association. It is all well and good to raise awareness and give money to a noble cause, but if you care so much about raising money for ALS, why not give the whole $100 instead of saving $90 by dumping a bucket of ice water over your head?

Whatever, it's your decision. But the biggest problem I have with this challenge is the wealthy celebrities that do the Ice Bucket Challenge? Like, you have billions of dollars yet you are still going to dump the bucket of water over your head instead of helping out the cause big time by donating a larger amount of money?

Justin Bieber did it twice, instead of donating to the cause. Why?

I know the Ice Bucket Challenge is supposed to be fun and stuff, but seriously, if you are taking a video of yourself completing the Ice Bucket challenge with your mansion or fancy pool or the rolling hills of your estate in the background, I think you are over-qualified to give more then just a video of you getting ice cubes in your hair.

So I am not telling you how to live your life or what charities to donate to, but if you are going to give part of your time to raise awareness for a cause, I think it is only fitting that you follow through and at least give your ten dollars.

-Katherine

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