By Pat Quinn and Pete Frates
Co-Founders, ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Five years ago, we challenged our friends and family to dump buckets full of ice over their heads to raise awareness and funds for ALS. The rest is history. This year, we have a new message: Challenge Me.

What started as a crazy idea turned into the biggest movement in the history of medicine. Over the next few weeks athletes, celebrities, politicians, families and friends around the world took the Challenge and changed the fight against ALS forever. In the summer of 2014, over 17 million people took the Ice Bucket Challenge and raised over $220 million for ALS organizations.

When Pete was first diagnosed with ALS seven years ago, his doctor told him there was no cure. Pete asked how much it would cost to find one and his doctor said a billion dollars. Pete told his doctor: "I’m going to go get that billion dollars."

While there is no cure or life-prolonging treatment yet, the Ice Bucket Challenge has had an immediate and profound impact on the fight against ALS.

Since 2014, the money we raised has led to new ALS genes being discovered, new assistive technologies to help people with ALS, and new potential treatments in the pipeline. And today, people diagnosed with ALS are getting better care services than ever before.

We have both outlived the 2-5 year expected survival rate for someone with ALS. But it hasn’t been easy – every day literally brings a new challenge.

We’ve both lost the ability to walk, talk, eat, use our limbs, and breathe on our own. Our only way to communicate with the outside world is through assistive technology that tracks our eye movements.

This disease wants to kill us, but every day we challenge ourselves to fight back.

Challenge Me.

Those two words capture the mindset we’ve had since the day we were each diagnosed. Those words sum up the spirit of the Ice Bucket Challenge and all our efforts to raise awareness and funds since then.

Five years ago, you accepted our challenge, you lifted your ice buckets, and you gave the ALS community a real sense of hope – the hope that this would be the beginning of the end of ALS. Now we need to finish the job.

We’re now calling on you to do whatever you can to challenge yourself to help us beat ALS, even if it’s just adopting our call to action. Have fun, be creative, and commit to do as much as you can and whatever you can for everyone living with ALS and their families.

Challenge Me to participate.
Challenge Me to advocate.
Challenge Me to donate.

Together, we can all change the world again, and find a cure for ALS.

Challenge Me.

The Challenge Me campaign picks up where the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge left off. This time, the ALS community is challenging everyone to do anything and everything they can to cure ALS. Click here to learn more.