Ice Bucket Challenge: A Gesture That Reaches Above the Fray

Every now and then, the gusty winds of social media can cause waves of such magnitude that they almost defy belief. These unpredictable movements come seemingly out of nowhere and quickly flood our collective social consciousness. Until a few months ago, all we knew of ALS is that a prominent baseball player from the 1930s died from it, lending his name to the condition: Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Ice Bucket Challenge: A Social Media Wave

Seventy-odd years later, another sports personality comes along with a bucket of ice water and thought it might be a good idea to film himself dumping it over his head while daring (nominating) his friends to do the same or donate money to ALS research. The moment he upended that bucket, a global social media phenomenon was born.

$100 million dollars later, the social media wave known as the Ice Bucket Challenge has simultaneously revolutionized the idea of mass scale fundraising and raised important questions about the lengths we’ll all go to in order to avoid giving more to critical illness research and other charitable organizations.

Ice Bucket or Ice Coffee?

Our CEO, George Melas, was recently nominated for the Ice Bucket Challenge and faced the tough decision it imposes. Dump ice water over his head or take the opportunity to contribute a generous amount to the cause?

To know George is to know instantly the answer to this question. Ice doesn’t go on your head, it goes in your drink! Iced coffee, iced tea, iced anything but his head. And really, nothing can be gained by dousing Our Glorious Leader in ice water – neither visually nor emotionally! Needless to say, George opted to make a generous donation rather than get cold and wet for the cause; a gesture we feel reaches above the fray and hype of this social media phenomenon and contributes to making a real difference.

We are proud to share this story with you and on behalf of George, his family and the SentinelAgent team, we wish everyone suffering from this devastating illness the strength and courage to continue to their battle. The Ice Bucket Challenge has been an unqualified success on a global scale and we hope that every dollar raised will contribute to one-day finding a cure for this terrible affliction.