Celebrities Taking Up ALS Ice Bucket Challenges: Videos

In the past few days, we have been seeing many Hollywood celebrities pouring a bucket of ice on themselves, and challenging someone else to do it within 24 hours.


If you haven’t yet figured out what that is all about, this is called Ice Bucket Challenge. It is an activity to spread awareness about a disease called ALS, which means Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and is sometimes also called as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Under this challenge, people take a bucket full of ice or ice-cold water and pour it on them or donate to a particular charity, or both.
This challenge has been around for a while now but gained momentum after Pete Frates, former baseball player from Boston, was diagnosed with ALS. Later, the player started an awareness drive with this challenge.

Ever since people like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Satya Nadella have taken up this challenge, it has gone viral.

Have a look at ice-bucket challenges undertaken by some of the most famous celebrities:

Mark Zuckerberg
The founder of social networking site Facebook was among the first celebrities to take up this challenge. He was challenged by Chris Christie, the 55th governor of New Jersey.



Bill Gates
The founder of Microsoft and philanthropist Bill Gates was challenged by Mark Zuckerberg and he put quite a mind into making a scientific structure to take the challenge.



Satya Nadella
The CEO of Microsoft was challenged by Steve Gleason, a former NFL player and a victim of ALS, who has been working with Microsoft for a while now. He took the challenge and was seen standing with the winners of a hackathon organised by the company.



Jennifer Lopez
The American actress and singer took up the challenge from footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and in turn, challenged collaborators Iggy Azalea and Pitbull, along with her good friend Leah Remini.



Justin Bieber
The teen sensation took up his second ice bucket challenge and challenged his fans all over the world to do the same.



Oprah Winfrey
The famous talk show host took this challenge too, and posted the video on her official Facebook account. She challenged Steven Spielberg, Dame Helen Mirren and actor Manish Dayal.



Steven Spielberg The filmmaker gladly accepted the challenge by Oprah and nominated George Lucas, Jeffrey Katzenberg & JJ Abrams.



We are glad that even as the celebs can be spotted having fun doing this challenge, the basic purpose of this has not been ignored as the donations to the charity have reached an all-time high. Quoting an official press release by The ALS Association, “As of Monday, August 18, The ALS Association has received $15.6 million in donations as compared to $1.8 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 18, 2013).

Amidst all this, there is a YouTuber by the name of zboy2855, who was challenged. Instead of taking up the challenge he decided to donate to the charity because he lost his mother to ALS. In this heart-rendered video, watch him talk about what ALS is all about and how he hopes that these donations would help the researchers find a cure for it, so that no one else has to face the emotional and physical pain that his mother went through.