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Play the game and feed the starving |
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Thursday, 12 June 2008 |
www.freerice.com
Free Rice is not the usual Internet game, and does not have the usual winning outcome. It is
a creative web-based vocabulary game which helps deliver rice to countries in need.
The game tests players’ vocabulary and FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level. It starts
by giving words of varying difficulty and then, based on how many are correct, assigns an
approximate starting level. A more exact level is determined during play. When you get a word
wrong, you go to an easier level . Get three words in a row right and the level gets harder.
For each click on a correct answer, the website donates money to buy 20 grains of rice.
Companies advertising on the website give money to the World Food Programme to buy and
distribute the rice. FreeRice went online in early October, and has so far donated more than
32 billion grains, enough to feed more than a million people for one day. Not an insignificant
lagniappe (small gift, according to the site).
A spokesperson for the WFP said: “World hunger is a huge and important issue. We think
this year we need $3.4 billion alone, as the World Food Programme, to feed some 73 million
people or so. With the high wheat and rice prices, the price has gone up so much - an extra half
a billion dollars - just because of the price rises… FreeRice really hits home how the web can
be harnessed to raise awareness and funds for the world's number one emergency.”
The site has no corporate, political or religious affiliation, and you do not need to register.
It was created by John Breen, a computer programmer and online fundraising pioneer from
Indiana who takes no money from it and has also created the sites www.poverty.com and
rainforestsite.com. So if you are procrastinating when you should be working, why not do some
good and increase your vocabulary level at the same time? Don’t be meshuga (crazy) – instead
of playing solitaire, go to FreeRice.com for a thoroughly copacetic (satisfactory) experience.
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