"Don't you wish there was a way you could feel morally satisfied about your internet time wastage AND make yourself feel smart? Today I discovered the most adorably efficient way to accomplish both goals: Free Rice http://www.freerice.com . It's a multiple choice vocabulary game, and for each word you guess correctly, the advertisers on the site donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Oh, and the competitive, ego-driven side of this? With each 3 correct answers, you go up a level and the words get harder. The maximum level is 50, though according to the FAQ, few get past 48.
Someone should make a Facebook application out of this (I am far too lazy to check and see if this has already happened) we would clearly get tonnes of rice and thousands of self-satisfied vocabulocrats out of it. "
It's not about the rice. It's about raising awareness. If you went there and checked it out, they have succeeded - weather you have nice comments to make about it or not, they are raising awareness. You may be able to get a $6 bag of rice on eBay to give to those in need, but the truth is, you're not going to. You could spend your thanks giving at a local soup kitchen, but you're not going to. If everyone did something, there wouldn't be a need, but most likely you're not going to. It's true that 10 grains of rice don't go far, but the awareness you gain from those ten grains of rice does. It's about spreading awareness. It's about working towards everyone making a difference. I could spend 3 hours clicking answers and donating 10 grains of rice at a time, but it would go much farther for me to spend those three hours telling other people about world hunger and poverty, weather that's through this Free Rice program or by other means. Check out the Millennium Development Goals: http://www.unhchr.ch/development/mdg.html What the United Nations - all the countries - agreed they could do for extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality and empower women, child mortality, maternal health, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, environmental sustainability, and a global partnership for development to better the world. I don't see that as our current focus with this war and all, but who knows, maybe they'll keep their word. Maybe we will come together and it will happen after all, but it takes everyone working together. Pitch in - do your part.
You could spend your time clicking and donating 10 grains at a time, or you could buy $20 of rice directly, but would you acctually make the $20 donation or would you blow it off? You CAN donate directly to world hunger and poverty. Try Heifer International. http://www.heifer.org/#
Anyways, if everyone in the world did this, it's FUN and, if everyone did, say an avarage of 1000 grains, that's a quadrillion grains of rice, surely enough to feed the hungry. It's something. If all 100 million + United States citizens did it, that's 100,000,000,000 grains of rice. What if everyone in the USA gave one cup of rice a day, or 10 cents a day to an organisation for world hunger, refugees, and poverty? What if the USA gave all the money we've used on war to such a cause? All the time and energy and resources to peace instead of war. What kind of difference would that make?
