Everybody's a Winner With Free Rice

by Kate Darlington · 2010-04-01 06:54:00 UTC
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Calling all online gamers, whiz-kids and humanitarians! Want to exercise your brain and feed the hungry, all with a simple click?

I recently discovered my newest procrastination technique on the website Free Rice. Part online game, part IQ test and part poverty alleviation, the non-profit site donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program (WFP) for every correct answer you give.

I'm always slightly skeptical of schemes like these. If the WFP has rice to give away, why make us "donors" jump through vocabulary test hoops in order for it to be distributed? However, after doing some research, I'm convinced everybody wins with Free Rice.

For one, the WFP doesn't have rice rotting in storage sheds as you struggle to correctly define "intumescence." To the contrary, the rice is purchased with money raised through sponsor advertising at the bottom of the page. The only way the money flows in is if advertisers think there are people out their looking at their ads. And the more people play, the more advertisers are willing to contribute.

Secondly, the goal of the site is not only to feed the hungry, but to increase education everywhere. As the site says, "Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your education can improve your life."  The program automatically adjusts to your level, so anyone can brush up on old knowledge or learn something new. While the default quiz is English vocabulary, you can test your smarts in math, grammar, chemistry, foreign language, geography and art history.

While 10 grains of rice doesn't sound like much, it adds up quickly. Since October 2007, Free Rice has donated over 77 billion grains of rice to WFP. That's more than 4 million servings. Numbers this big are a bit hard to conceptualize, so here's a few examples of what the rice has been used for:

  • In Bangladesh, feeding 27,000 refugees from Myanmar for two weeks.

  • In Cambodia, providing take-home rations rice for two months to 13,500 pregnant and nursing women.

  • In Uganda, feeding 66,000 school children for a week.

  • In Nepal, feeding over 108,000 Bhutanese refugees for three days.

  • In Bhutan, feeding 41,000 children for 8 days.

  • In Myanmar, feeding 750,000 cyclone affected people for 3 days.

So bookmark this site, and next time you're waiting for a video to load, listening to a friend ramble on the phone, studying for an art history test, or wishing you could do something to fight world hunger, hop onto Free Rice and check it out.

Photo Credit: Mr. Kris

Kate Darlington graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a degree in International Political Economy. Recently, she worked for the Indigenous Fisher Peoples Network in Kenya.
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