The ALS Ice Bucket challenge has developed from either accepting the challenge or making a donation to an ALS Charity to doing both, which is what Kaylan, Kelsey, and Bjorn Rekken committed to when accepting the challenge from their cousin, Carmyn Smit.
"It's kind of rude to dump ice on yourself and not donate," Kelsey stated.
This is in fact the norm of the social media challenge now, to both share a creative video and donate to ALS.
Many stick to using buckets of ice, while others have been a little more original such as pouring ice water into an auger and running to the end to be drenched, while another video has someone laying down at the end of a slide with a friend pouring the ice water down.
The Rekken boys, however, were determined to go big and after being challenged by their cousin they called each other discovering they had the same idea: fill the bucket of a payloader with ice water and have their father, Kelly, douse them.
"We all thought the same thing, use a payloader and get it done in one bang," Bjorn said.
With 24-hours to complete the challenge, the boys were ready by 10 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 25, for the task.
Using a 966 Cat loader the boys filled it with, their guess of, approximately 600 litres of water. Standing inside their parents' shop at the Carlyle Rental Centre, they each filled a bucket of ice, and got the cameras rolling. Opening the garage style door the boys dumped their buckets into the loader and the bucket was raised, and with a thumbs up to Kelly, Kaylan, Kelsey, and Bjorn were drenched, with Kaylan even losing a shoe in the process.
Laughing after, they were cold, but satisfied with their plan, which came with the donation of $500 to ALS from the Rekken family.
"That was awesome!" Bjorn exclaimed as he stood shivering in the shop after.
During the video they took, the boys challenged friends including Ashley Nelson, Ashton Dumaine, Mitchell Weber, and Victor VanDressar, but the challenge was also issued to the entire Town of Carlyle.
ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a disease and was first discovered in the late 1800s, but attention wasn't brought to the disease until it ended Lou Gehrig's baseball career in 1939. It is a neurodegenerative disease which sees motor neurons die in one's body ultimately causing the inability to control muscle movement leaving the individual paralyzed.
ALS is not fully understood and although there are some therapies and treatments, there is no cure for the disease. Thus, the ice bucket challenge is a way to raise awareness for ALS and fundraise for furthering research surrounding the disease.
As of Sunday, Aug. 24, the ice bucket challenge has helped the ALS Association raise $70.2 million in donations compared to $2.5 million last year during the same time as the ALS Association's webpage states.
