This is a very amazingly good idea. According to freerice.com
“FreeRice has two goals:
- Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
- Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.”
And here’s how they do it.
“FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice - you are earning it 10 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.”
Clicking on the totals link at the top, you’re hit by the true impact of the idea. Even though one click means you donate only 10 grains, it adds up to a lot. They’ve donated 2,457,120,420 grains of rice as of November 17th, 2007. And thats just in over a month.
As if the end-to-world-hunger isn’t incentive enough, you get to improve your vocabulary as well. So all you people preparing for your TOEFLs and your GREs and your IELTSs; use the site. Fuzzy warm feeling in the pit of your stomach guaranteed.
If they’re really doing what they say they’re doing, then we should be supporting it. Make it a habit guys. Spend a few minutes each day. Bumper sticker it, bookmark it, del.icio.us it, Web2.0 the hell out of it. And don’t forget to put it on your blog.