Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Get smarter & save the world

The website FreeRice.com was started with two goals in mind:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.

2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Lo and behold, that's exactly what it does. When you arrive at the site, you're asked a vocabulary question (don't worry, you don't have to sign up or anything - no forms, I promise). If you answer it correctly, the site donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program; then you're asked a harder question. With each question you answer correctly, the site gives another 20 grains away. In January, the site donated a total of 4,551,581,980 grains (that comes to more than 150,000 pounds).

The best part is, even if you get an answer wrong, you can still continue to play. And the site keeps track of how much rice you've donated in a cute little ricebowl icon to the right. You can also change your settings so that the site remembers you when you return, keeping a tally on how many grains of rice you've given since you first started playing.

So. Next time you want to procrastinate, why not increase your word knowledge and give a little something to the poor? It's that easy.

(Many thanks to a commenter on the WSJ Health Blog for pointing out the site.)

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a great idea! Thanks for this, Melinda. Feeding the hungry for free is a great incentive and a wonderful use of the Internet. Which reminds me, thehungersite.com is an excellent site for a home page so that each day when you start up your computer, you can click on the little box, thereby sending 1.1 cups of food to the hungry, paid for by advertisers. In 2007, 53,637,841 cups of food were donated through two charities. It's ALL good!

--A.W.

7:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Rice site was discussed on NBC Nightly News last week. I jumped out of my chair when I saw the report start, because I saw it on your blog first!

9:50 AM  
Blogger Abhay said...

hey where you no post ?

missing you blogger

2:56 AM  
Blogger Tom said...

i'm missing you too! ?donde esta?

2:59 AM  
Blogger MonFineis said...

Thanks for the great site reference! I'm so going to tweet about this.

8:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for letting us know about this site. I'm headed there right now.

Dagny
www.onnotextiles.com
bamboo and organic clothing

3:26 PM  
Blogger Christie Lynn said...

This is such a great site - I completely get lost trying to improve my vocab score!

Christie
Bored?

11:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey,

came around your blog today. it's interesting. i'm subscribed. this post was really good. keep writing good stuff.

8:30 AM  
Blogger madraskaari said...

Hi -- I thought I was going to feed quite a few folks with my killer vocabulary, but alas I did not do that great

5:59 AM  

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