As I begin my working career in the post-college world, I am beginning to think about the necessity for charitable work with my pay. Once a month, I will be making a donation from my salary, and will be blogging about the places that the money goes, in an attempt to not only hold myself accountable, but also provide awareness and education on some very important works. This serves as the first.
How long does it take to get the world’s attention? Apparently, 10 weeks will do the trick.
There isn’t necessarily a secret formula. Audio-visual aids help. An element of humor is great. A world-renowned celebrity endorsement can’t hurt.
It is no surprise, then, that the entire world has been paying attention to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. At the beginning of the summer, we saw a few people jumping into bodies of cold water. It was funny, it was intriguing, but it only went so far. As far as I knew, there was no organizational sponsor; the donation that accompanied rejecting the challenge was to any charity of your choice. I suppose, if there was organization to it, and I didn’t know about it, then it wasn’t working anyway.
That all changed a few weeks ago. There was a moment of focusing of the campaign, an attempt to centralize the fun and human interest intrigue, while maintaining the viral videos that made the “cold water challenge” successful.
What resulted was a full-scale social media coup. Everyone was participating. Literally everyone. A look at your Facebook news feed stopped including links to articles, pictures of family vacations, and rants. There seemed to only be an endless loop of videos of people dunking themselves in water.
Post by Austin Zoot.
The reason that “Ice Bucket challenge” took off so much more enthusiastically than the “Cold Water Challenge” was because of the element of focus associated with a cause. By donating money specifically to the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association, participants were able to band together around making a difference for people struggling with a terrible disease. Did it matter what the cause was? Probably not. But off it took.
ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, is a neurological disease that slowly destroys the motor neurons leading between the brain and spinal cord, eventually leading to loss of muscle movement. Every year, 6,000 Americans are diagnosed with ALS. Every year, those diagnosed are living longer. Which is where the ice buckets come in.
By making a video of yourself dumping ice water on your head, you are spreading awareness for a terrible disease that has the power to destroy families. But, with the help of an accompanying donation, we have the power to make a much larger impact on working toward a cure.
Celebrities like LeBron James, Oprah, the New England Patriots, and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have all submitted themselves to the fad. President Barack Obama was nominated, but chose to make a donation, rather than submit to the icy blast, which does just as much good (if not more).
Critics of the challenge are growing irritated by the growing number of videos bombarding their walls. They are understandably frustrated by the action that doesn’t inherently represent any kind of good for others. “Awareness” doesn’t actually help anyone, unless action comes with it. We are a generation of slack-tevism, rather than true activism.
But we are aware. ALS has our attention, and our dollars. It has our time and our commitment. We are doing what we can, and making a positive difference in doing it. In the past two and a half weeks, the ALSA has received $11.4 million in donations, as compared to $1.7 million during the same period a year ago. THAT is exactly what making a difference looks like.
The world is a pretty screwed up place. Missiles fly back and forth between Israel and Gaza. Air strikes in Iraq put the American government in another conflict. American politics at home aren’t pretty. Yet, amidst all of this horror, we have the opportunity to go outside, dump some water on our heads, and take our attention to making the lives of our fellow humans better. There are a lot of issues that we don’t have the power to fix. In this case, though, we at least have the ability to help.
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