14 DAY TRIAL // Charlie Sheen doesn’t get enough credit for how amazing he is and the wonderful gestures he occasionally makes. So this here is meant like a round of applause and a standing ovation for him, because he took the famous Ice Bucket Challenge and turned it into something it should have been from the start: a generous gesture for a good cause.
The Ice Bucket Challenge has taken over social media, with countless celebrities taking part in it and spreading the word. The Challenge means that, once you’re nominated by a friend, you have 2 choices: either you douse yourself with a bucket of ice water or you donate money to an ALS organization.
If you choose the former, you have to make a video of you carrying out the challenge, and at the end of it, you nominate 3 other friends, who have 24 hours to choose one of the 2 options mentioned above.
To put it differently, celebrities are making a show of themselves on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram just so they can get out of donating money to charity. Enter Charlie Sheen.
In the video below, which he sent to TMZ, Sheen accepts the Challenge but puts a spin on it that brings the focus back where it should have been from the start: on the need to donate money to the ALS Organization and, at the same time, to raise awareness of ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease).
Instead of filling the bucket, which is actually a large pot, with ice water, Sheen filled it with cold hard cash – $10,000 (€7,486) worth of it, which he then poured on himself. He made it rain.
At the end of the video, the actor explained that he would be donating all the money to the ALS Association because ice may melt, but money always comes in handy. He also nominated his former “Two and a Half Men” nemesis Chuck Lorre and Jon Cryer and Ashton Kutcher, specifically telling them to do just exactly as he did.
So none of that ice water stuff, Sheen wants them to put their money where their mouth is.
Despite the fact that most celebrities participating in the challenge didn’t donate and didn’t even mention ALS when they agreed to pour water onto themselves, the ALS Association is reporting a massive increase in donations.
So far, the organization has raised $13.3 million (€9.95 million) from donations. By comparison, last year’s donations only amounted to a “measly” $1.7 million (€1.27 million). Can you imagine the kind of help the Association would receive if more celebrities did the Challenge in the same way as Charlie Sheen?