What a novel idea!
If you surf to - freerice.com - you can test your facility for words - and at the same time - make a contribution to feed hungry mouths of the world.
For example, when you surf to the automated web site, just click on a word to test your knowledge of its meaning.
If you get the answer correct, the UN World Food Program will donate twenty grains of rice in your name!
Essentially, FreeRice has two goals:
First, to provide an English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Secondly, to end world hunger by providing rice to needy people without cost.
The project is made possible by concerned sponsors who advertise on the site.
Whether you are a CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. Subsequently, the goal is not only a worthwhile one, but a great investment for the future.
More importantly - the organizers note - a hands-on involvement in the project results in a donation of rice to the impoverished of the world, which later - by virtue of its nutritional value - not only nourishes, but enables the needy to function - and hence - be more productive with their lives.
If you contribute to the effort in the near future, somewhere around the globe a hungry individual will be eating rice you helped provide!
You may wonder how playing the "vocabulary game" at FreeRice may help a person. For starters, a grasp of new vocabulary has tremendous benefits.
For example, a facility with words can help an individual:
*Formulate ideas better
*Write better papers, emails and business letters
*Speak more precisely and persuasively
*Comprehend more of what is read
*Read faster because the ideas are comprehended better
*Get better grades in high school, college and graduate school
*Score higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT
*Perform better at job interviews and conferences
*Sell themselves, services, and products better
*Be more effective and successful at their job
And, after participating in the FreeRice program for a couple of days, organizers allege participants may notice an odd phenomenon. Words that were never consciously used before will begin to pop into the head while a person is speaking or writing. In sum, those who get involved in the project, may find themselves facilitating words in remarkably new and interesting ways, according to the sponsors.
This is how the program works at the site:
FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors. In addition, there are thousands of words tailor-made for students, business people, homemakers, doctors, truck drivers, retired people - you name it.
FreeRice automatically adjusts to the player's level of vocabulary as they engage in word play at the site. For instance, it starts off by giving words at different levels of difficulty - and then, based on how well a person does - assigns an approximate starting level. Then, the individual may determine a more exact level as they continue to play.
When word turns out to be wrong, the person is kicked down to an easier level. When three words in a row are right, a harder level is activated. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping individuals at the “outer fringe” of their vocabulary where learning can take place, note the experts.
There are 55 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get much above level 48.
How is the difficulty level for each word determined?The program keeps track of how many people get each word right or wrong, and then adjusts each word’s difficulty level accordingly. So the words at the easiest levels are the ones that people most often get right. The words at the hardest levels are the ones that people most often get wrong. As more and more people have played the game, these levels have become increasingly more accurate.
The rice is paid for by the advertisers posted on the bottom of the vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry).
The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).
The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy.
People may wonder why the rice is not handed out right away...
FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice; the players are earning it at twenty grains at a time.
Here's how it works. When a person plays the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of the screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, the interactive party generates the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.
Facts about World Hunger
In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank refers to as "absolute poverty"
Every year 15 million children die of hunger.
For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for five years, according to the latest research.
Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten spanking-new stealth bombers or what the world spends on its military in two days, apparently.
The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed, while the remaining one-third is starving.
When a person first enters the freerice site, at least 200 people will have died of starvation. And, according to the latest statistics, over 4 million will perish this year.
One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5.
The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately forty percent, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world.
Nearly one in four people (1.3 billion - a majority of humanity) live on less than on dollar per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with forty-five percent of the world's people.
3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on two dollars (U.S. funds) a day.
In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of six elderly people in the U.S. have an inadequate diet.
And, in the United States, it is alleged that hunger and race are related. In 1991 forty-six percent of African-American children were chronically hungry, and forty percent of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to sixteen percent of white children.
The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night and half of all children under five years of age in South Asia. One third of the populace’s children in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death
About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age.
To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only thirteen billion (U.S. funds) - a sum consumers in the United States and the European Union - spend on perfume and cosmetics each year.
The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.
It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.
Do you part today, to end world hunger tomorrow!
FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site at Poverty.com
