Monday Morning Feed from SmartPak: #IceBucketChallenge

SmartPak never hesitates to get behind a good cause. In the case of ALS awareness, support involved SmartPak employees and several buckets of ice water!

Here’s the deal: Participants have 24 hours to either pour a bucket of ice water over their heads or donate $100 to help fight ALS — or both! When our friends at SmartPak got challenged, they rose to the occasion:

Here’s the SmartPak office staff…

…and the SmartPak store staff!

They now challenge Team SmartPak and SmartPak fans — you have 24 hours!

Of course, Horse Nation had to get in on the action as well. Here’s our commander in chief Leslie Wylie taking the challenge and passing it on to HN writers and friends.

Brrrrrr! Have you taken the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge? Send us your photos and videos to [email protected].

We’re having a lot of fun with the campaign, of course, but ALS is a serious condition for which there is not a cure. Eventing Nation writer Sally Spickard gives us an in-depth breakdown on the disease, the Challenge and how you can help:

Let’s get a little background on the subject we’re raising awareness for, shall we? Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a neurodegenerative disease, meaning that the brain and spinal cord are affected. This disease affects a person’s motor skills with the death of motor neurons needed by the brain to control muscle movement. As the motor neurons deteriorate and, eventually, die, the brain becomes unable to send the necessary signals to muscles to create movement. Muscles will begin to atrophy as a result of their inability to move properly, and patients may eventually become completely paralyzed.

The disease has also been called Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after the famed New York Yankee who was diagnosed with ALS in 1939. Before Lou made the public announcement about his diagnosis, ALS was virtually unheard of. For a man who had built his life around his exceptional motor skills, the diagnosis came as a devastating blow, and Lou passed away less than two years later.

Today, social media has become a place where ideas (good or bad) quickly become viral. The Ice Bucket Challenge began just a couple of weeks ago, getting a slow start on Twitter but gaining exponential traction as time went on. Soon enough, Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines were overflowing with people all over the country dunking themselves in ice for a good cause.

How has this affected donations to the cause, you may ask? According to the Wall Street Journal, the ALS Association has been able to raise $7.6M in donations in two weeks from this campaign. Last year, the ALS Association raise $1.4M during the same period. How’s that for making a difference?

So, EN, how can you help? We don’t want to leave you out of the fun, so we would like to nominate YOU to participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge. We’d love to be able to post some of your videos, so if you’d like to share yours, email [email protected].

Want to know how to make a donation to the ALS Association? You can find much more information here. Aside from the Ice Bucket Challenge, there are many walks scheduled throughout the country that are available for you to participate in as well. Let’s join in and make a difference!

Go SmartPak, and Go Riding!