Play a Game and Give to the Hungry

FreeRice.com makes it easy, educational, and fun to donate to the needy. For every correct answer you select on its vocabulary-testing game, FreeRice donates ten grains of rice to the hungry. This initiative is in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Founded by John Breen in 2007, the non-profit website has so far donated 94 billion grains of rice. The United Nations says “a child dies every 6 seconds from hunger related causes.” This is so sad; while part of the world’s population is starving, the rest of the world is living in gluttonous excess and stuffing their faces with Big Macs.

So how exactly does the project pay for all this rice? According to the website, money generated from its banner ads is used to purchase the rice. The sponsors pay for the cost of their advertisements directly to the United Nations World Food Programme.

The rice is distributed to areas with the greatest need. Here are just two examples of how FreeRice has helped:

• 66,000 school children in Uganda were fed for one week.
• 13,500 pregnant or nursing women in Cambodia were given enough rice for two month’s worth of rations.

To give you a rough idea of how you can help: there is roughly 48 grains of rice in one gram and the average person requires about 400 grams of rice per day. So if you answer 1,920 questions correctly (400 g = 19,200 grains; divided by 10), you are donating enough rice to feed one person for one day.

So get cracking already and spread the news to everyone you know! I played the game and it only took a few minutes to donate 420 grains of rice. I cheated a bit by looking up some words on Dictionary.com – looks like I need to brush up on my vocabulary.

Check out www.FreeRice.com.