A viral challenge is taking the world by storm. Last seen in 2014 to support lateral sclerosis, the Ice Bucket Challenge has returned and has swept all over the country to bring awareness to mental health and suicide prevention.
The University of South Carolina’s MIND Club, which stands for Mental Illness Needs Discussion, brought this challenge back from the dead to try and raise awareness while helping boost programs in need.
USC called it the Speak Your Mind challenge and set a list of rules to participate in and what to do afterwards. The rules are as follows:
– Nominate 2-5 people by tagging them to join.
– Make a donation through ActiveMinds.
– Use the hashtag #SpeakYourMIND and tag @uscmind.
Starting in South Carolina, the trend spread through different school districts, eventually reaching Lake Stevens High School.
“I had some friends from Marysville Getchell High School nominate me,” sophomore Sarah Nguyen said.
While this challenge was successfully spreading through schools with the concept of raising mental health awareness, not every part of the original challenge is spread. Over time, the only thing that was spoken about in each video was the fact that the purpose was to bring attention to mental health awareness.
“I did not know about the ActiveMinds donation ‘cause it wasn’t tagged in the video I was tagged in, so I didn’t donate,” teacher Willow Kosbab said.
One of the rules that is not as widely known at the moment is the donation through ActiveMinds. ActiveMinds is a nonprofit organization in the United States and is located in Washington, DC.
“I didn’t even realize that was something you could do,” junior Lucas Townsend said.
Even though participants were not widely aware of the donation part of this challenge, the fundraiser still raised over $500,000 for #SpeakYourMIND.
The purpose of this challenge was to spread awareness, and it did just that, even if not everyone knows the deep meaning behind it.
“It’s working to raise awareness, ‘cause you know, you got people talking about it. That’s the important part,” Townsend said.
Some people don’t tend to look any further past the general purpose behind trends, but for others, the purpose means something to them personally.
“I was able to just let people know that there are other people who will support them when they do need it, other than this being just a trend for other people to bring back,” Nguyen said.
Overall, the ice bucket challenge is making an impact all over the country. Even if people don’t know the full backstory to it, the whole purpose was to bring more awareness to mental health and suicide prevention, to get people talking about it.
