Money
Getting the best deal
Free Rice
Prone to pangs of guilt over frittering time on aimless browsing? Asks Andrew Stucken
Fret no more. A novel online word quiz is offering the chance to play a vocabulary game while earning rice to feed hungry people.
The website www.freerice.com was launched on October 7 - and the idea is brilliantly simple. Go to www.freerice.com and you will be presented with a screen which requires no explanation. Choose the correct definition of a randomly generated word from the four options – and every correct answer earns 20 grains of rice.
FreeRice is a not-for-profit sister site of poverty campaigners poverty.com and the rice paid for by advertisers. It was conceived by US online fundraising pioneer and poverty.com founder John Breen.
The genius of the site lies in its addictiveness and competitive element. And the more you play the more rice you earn – a win-win scenario. The first two questions are designed to assess vocabulary level on a scale of 0 to 50.
The challenge to improve is irresistible and more and more people are taking it up. Thanks to viral marketing, the site became the most-visited online humanitarian site within a few weeks of its launch.
Daily totals are now pushing 300 million grains and the overall amount is nearing ten billion. One billion grains is enough to feed 50,000 people for one day.
According to the UN, a staggering figure of 25,000 people die from hunger daily – one every three and a half seconds. The United Nations World Food Programme is charged with distributing the rice and works in over 75 countries. Breen has already handed over a cheque for $100,000 (about £50,000) which will go towards feeding the 26,000 Burmese refugees in Bangladesh.
As FreeRice says: “Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.”
Useful articles
- A quick guide to setting up a charity
- How to be tax-savvy and help charity
- Choose your donations carefully this Christmas
