Saturday, December 1, 2007

FreeRice.com

Today, I followed a link from Cognitive Blindspot to FreeRice.com. This is a sister site to Poverty.com and donates rice through the United Nations Word Food Program based on a word game. I did have some doubts about the site and tried to google it up to see if it was a scam. So far, I haven't found any mention that it is fake and have found a link to this site from BBC News.

The site gives you a chance to test as well as improve your vocabulary. With each correct answer you provide, 20 grains of rice will be donated. The rice is paid for by the advertisers that you'll see at the bottom of the screen.

20 grains of rice sounds like very little but every little bit adds up. In just half an hour, you can accumulate thousands of grains of rice. Since FreeRice started in early October, they have donated nearly 5 Billion grains of rice. According to the BBC article, 1 Billion grains is sufficient to feed 50,000 people for one day.

There are plenty of fun meme's out there but writing a post about this site, as I have done after reading Cognitive Blindspot would be like doing a meme that also helps others. I believe the original meaning of a meme was the viral like transmission of a particular idea/topic from blogger to blogger. This looks like a good one to keep circulating.

4 comments:

John A Hill said...

An educational site that helps others as well! I stopped by long enough to donate a couple of bowls.

Kellan said...

They are not getting many grains of rice from me - due to my lack of vocabulary abilities - but I have done it and it is fun and such a great game. Have a good Sunday, Amanda.

MamaGeek @ Works For Us said...

I actually read about this on a few other blogs as well. It's so humbling to think what 20 grains of rice can mean, huh?

Serina Hope said...

That is awesome! I have got to check this out. Great of you to share this.