Growing Your Vocabulary While Feeding Those in Need
If you would like to help your child achieve masterful scores on the SAT vocabulary, you can now do so via an interesting setup. You can go to the website www.freerice.com. There, your youngster will learn some interesting, esoteric words. But in addition, right answers lead to grains of rice being sent to the hungry of the world. So along with the fun of the word-game, players get an extra jolt of "feel good" joy:
It all began when a father was trying to find a way to help his son prepare for the SAT. Today, some 500,000 people daily visit the vocabulary-quiz website the Indiana-based computer programmer set up.
The site, which made its debut in OctÂoÂber, donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program (WFP) every time a player selects the correct definition for a particular word. The layout of the site is simple: The left side of the page has a word with four possible definitions below. When the user clicks on a definition, a new page loads and indicates whether the answer was correct. If the user was right, a graphic of a wooden bowl on the right side of the page fills with 20 grains of rice. (The average adult needs 18,000-20,000 grains of rice to eat for a day.)
The site had received some over million hits. Paid for with advertising income, over 4 billion grains have been won for the WFP so far. That's 160 metric tons, or enough to feed 200,000 people for one day.
"It's really caught fire," says Brenda Barton, a WFP spokeswoman. "More people visit our site from the link on Freerice.com than any other referral." "We see an interest, especially among kids, in the issue of hunger," Ms. Barton says. "We need to talk to them at their level by using the Internet and video games. Freerice.com does that."
People from all walks of life and from around the globe have written in to express their appreciation for the game, she says. "We get messages from fourth-Âgraders saying, 'I really enjoyed playing this game. My teacher has organized a spelling bee using it.' "
The same parent had experience in online philanthropy before. In 1999, he created http://www.thehungersite.com . Visitors can "click to donate" a cup of food to an impoverished person. Sponsors pay for the food; visitors are limited to one donation per day. The site averages nearly 200,000 hits daily and has brought in $2.9 million for the WFP so far.
