ALS Challange:
Promoting a cause, or Wasting Resources?
Why is it necessary to create a ridiculous challenge to encourage people to donate to a good cause? The Ice Bucket Challenge is a game where you nominate your peers to dump ice, cold water on themselves, and if they fail to do so, they must donate money to the ALS foundation. The idea is to have people feel the way those with ALS feel. It is a simplistic game for people to impress their fellow peers and colleagues. The challenge itself is not the best way to promote ALS awareness. If the challenge is done, then money is not even donated. If the challenge isn’t done, there’s no way to be sure that person donated anything. It is a huge waste of water, which is a resource that everyone needs to survive. Most people don’t know what ALS stands for, and are just doing the challenge as a bandwagon.
What exactly is ALS? It stands for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Those who do this challenge may not know what cause they are fighting for. Another term for ALS is the Lou Gehrig’s disease, which is a slow degeneration of the lower brain and the spinal cord nerve endings. ALS is a disorder that affects the function of nerves and muscles. It is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord (What Is ALS). In the challenge, we are dumping ice-cold water, which sends chills down spinal to replicate the sensation of the disorder. Based on U.S population studies, a little over 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS every year. Also, there are different categories of ALS, which are significantly dissimilar from one another. The most common types are called Sporadic, Familial, which is a lot smaller case study and only fall into 5% of all cases, and Guamanian, which is a highly rare type of ALS (Forms). People assume that ALS isn’t very common, but it can happen to anyone.
Water is one of the most precious elements that humans need to survive. Recently in California, there is a drought that is occurring, and they only have water for the next 9 months or so. There are people in third world countries that are losing their lives due to dehydration and malnourishment. We use our vital resources to make them into things like the Ice Bucket challenge, which wastes water. Why can’t we just donate instead of doing the challenge and wasting water? Why do the challenge and avoid giving money to the ALS cause? Some may argue that it brings attention to the cause, however, it wastes resources. Obviously, the ALS challenge provides awareness for a good cause, but the problem is that people aren’t actually going to anything. Yes, people will get nominated and all they nominate others and it exponentially expands, but when do we really ever see anyone donate? All we see is people dump water on them and use it as a social trend.
In California there is a devastating drought that is leaving the whole state in awry. Three consecutive dry years have pushed California into a historic drought. Reservoirs are at half-capacity or less and dropping, groundwater basins and ecosystems are stressed, and wildfire risk is extremely high (2014). Another trend of the ALS challenge is where celebrities conduct the ice bucket challenge on them and challenge other stars to do the same. Hollywood is in California, so the stars are advocating wastage of water. They leave an impression that it is okay to do the challenge even though there is a water shortage in many countries. This is how the trend starts and the general public starts to imitate to gain their fellow peers’ attention.
Raising awareness for something you believe in and has a meaningful purpose is always a noble thing to do, but we need to take a step back and realize if the way we are spreading the word is the right way to do. Yes, this challenge has made people somewhat more aware of this life-changing disorder, but it defeats the purpose for people to actually make a contribution to this cause. Dumping cold water isn’t going to make a difference in helping the ALS cause. A way of changing the challenge to actually benefit would be the people that actually do donate, and post a video challenging others to do the same, and giving reasons why they donated. The first step in solving a problem is realizing that there is something that can be done, and we should do it in an efficient way and not waste resources.
Works Cited
"2014 Drought Watch." ACWA. Ed. Water Supply Challenges. SymSoft Solutions, 2014. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
"Forms of ALS." ALS Association. Ed. ALS Association. Rip Van Winkle
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"What Is ALS?" Create a World without ALS. Ed. ALS Association. ALS
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