I just stumbled about a great website, Freerice.com; The site's goals are twofold: Provide English vocabulary lessons for free and help end world hunger by providing free rice to hungry people.The system, the latest brainchild of e-charity innovator John Breen, works like follows: you select multiple choice word definitions: if you get it right, you get a harder word. If you get it wrong, the next word is easier. For each correct answer, Free Rice donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.
By further reading up on this website on the internet, it becomes obvious that they have gotten a lot of meduia attention since their start in October 2007. It really is a very fun way to help the poor, all the more necessary with rice prices (and those of other basic staple foods) currently exploding on the world market.
"Freerice.com is an international, viral sensation. Folks from Thailand to Germany and India are just as enthusiastic . . . improving thousands of lives, all with a simple, collective, click of a mouse." - CBS Evening News
In case you were wondering, FreeRice.com is neither a hoax nor a scam, despite its seemingly too-good-to-be-true premise. The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry).
It's no replacement for good, old-fashioned, get-out-your-checkbook charitable giving, but at 26 billion grains of rice (and counting) donated to date, neither should it be dismissed as just another online time waster.
Links of Interest:
- Freerice.com
- Web Game Provides Free Rice for Hungry -- BBC News
- Lexicographical Beneficence: Freerice.com -- NY Times Magazine
- Saving the World One Click at a Time -- Sydney Morning Herald
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