A New Kind of Donation Culture from the United States - The Ice Bucket Challenge

Are you interested in donation? Recently, the Ice Bucket Challenge has hit the world. Due to this donation, the perspective on donation a little bit changed. Before the IBC, donation only meant something serious but after it led to the idea that donation can be fun. What do you think of this donation culture? Read this article, and let us know what you think!

A New Kind of Donation Culture from the United States

- The Ice Bucket Challenge

Hyun Jin Lee

Graduated from KyungPook National University

Dept. of French Language and Literature

A few months ago, the Ice Bucket Challenge, also called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, was the trend of the summer. It is an activity involving pouring a bucket of ice water on someone’s head to promote awareness of the disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(ALS) – also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease - and to encourage individual donations. The process of the challenge is simple. When someone is nominated by other participants who have done the challenge, the nominated can choose to make videos pouring water on themselves and then nominating others or simply donate money to related organization without dumping ice-water.

As American celebrities including Bill Gates and other famous figures in different fields took part in the challenge, it went viral through media and spread throughout the world. Likewise, in Korea, it was easy to see the videos of celebrities, politicians and even friends doing the challenge. But, why did the Ice Bucket Challenge become a huge trend?

It is because the Ice Bucket Challenge was striking enough to attract public’s attention and had power of influence to encourage individual participation. It is funny and amusing to see the videos of celebrities and friends getting wet with a bucket of ice water. Accordingly, it was easy to attract people to promote the existence of the activity and its purpose. When people think about donation, they usually think of it in the typical sense, simply giving money to charity. Thanks to this challenge, the common belief changed into a new idea that donation activities can be very active and lively. It leads to the increase of individual interest in donation.

However, some people are blaming the challenge for not being aware of saving water and pointing out that those who want to promote themselves are misusing the challenge. Despite these shortcomings, it is true that public’s current enormous attention and participation could not be made without the Ice Bucket Challenge. To conclude, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is meaningful in itself that it spread out the donation spirit all over the world and increases the public’s interests and practices of individual donation.