There's been so much bad news lately, it seemed a good time to hit you with a diary that's uplifting and will fill you with hope for the future of today's kids.
Mimi Ausland, age twelve, is the heroine of our story.
An animal lover, Mimi had been volunteering at her local shelter in Bend, Oregon, since she was seven years old; she knew how much help was needed to care for its charges.
Mimi had seen her father, Kelly Ausland, going to FreeRice (more later) every day; with each visit to the site, rice was sent to needy people in starving countries (there's a bit about that below as well).
Thus was born Mimi’s idea to help feed needy dogs and cats.
If you haven’t visited FreeRice yet -- or you have, but not recently -- you should get right on over there as soon as you finish reading (and rec’ing) this diary. It’s really fun, even if it is educational.
FreeRice has two goals:
Provide education to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
This is made possible by the generosity of the sponsors who advertise on this site. Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your education can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.
Does it really make a difference playing FreeRice?
Absolutely. The rice you donate makes a huge difference to the person who receives it. According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children. Though 20 grains of rice may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that while you are playing, so are thousands of other people at the same time. It is everyone together that makes the difference. Thanks to you, FreeRice has generated enough rice to feed more than two million people since it started in October 2007.
Clearly, the erudite elite of Daily Kos will want to play FreeRice’s original vocabulary game.
As the site notes:
"Learning new vocabulary has tremendous benefits. It can help you:
Formulate your ideas better
Write better papers, emails and business letters
Speak more precisely and persuasively
Comprehend more of what you read
Read faster because you comprehend 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 yourself, your services, and your products better
Be more effective and successful at your job
After you have done FreeRice for a while, you may notice an odd phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will feel yourself using and knowing more words."
But here’s the really exciting part:
You can also play the game with Famous Paintings, Chemical Symbols (Basic), Chemical Symbols (Full List), English Grammar, Identify Countries on the Map , World Capitals, Basic Math (Pre-Algebra), Multiplication Table, and learning French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Not that any of you need to learn about any of this stuff, being experts as you are about everything.
FreeRice is a sister site of Poverty.com. Its partners are the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the United Nations World Food Programme.
About Hunger and World Poverty
About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.
Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.
There are effective programs to break this spiral. For adults, there are "food for work" programs where the adults are paid with food to build schools, dig wells, make roads, and so on. This both nourishes them and builds infrastructure to end the poverty. For children, there are "food for education" programs where the children are provided with food when they attend school. Their education will help them to escape from hunger and global poverty.
Cut back to Mimi, who saw what her father was accomplishing with FreeRice, and was inspired to create a website that would do the same for dogs.
"I went to a local pet store and asked them if they’d donate the food if people went online and clicked to donate it, and they agreed," Mimi said.
On April 1, Mimi launched FreeKibble: each person who went to the site was asked a trivia question. Whether answered correctly or not, ten pieces of kibble were donated to her local shelter.
The Humane Society of Central Oregon started getting hundreds of pounds of food. But Mimi’s idea was destined for larger things. Within two months, information about the site had gone national, and the pet store couldn’t keep up with the demand for donations. The Auslands started looking for national companies to help.
In stepped Castor & Pollux Pet Works, a company that manufactures natural and organic pet foods, as well as zootoo.com, a pet Web site launched by the former owner of Meow Mix.
Suddenly the little site Mimi started to help one shelter was able to help others. She’s now donating food to nine shelters or groups in Florida, Portland, Chicago and New York State, as well as one in Forsyth County GA.
"We didn’t apply at first because they’re on the West Coast, but then we heard they were looking for other shelters to help," said Tim Link, president of the Humane Society of Forsyth County. For the past three months, his shelter has received 1,500 pounds of dog food and 500 pounds of cat food from the site in the form of Castor & Pollux coupons.
"It doesn’t cover everything we need, but it’s certainly a big help," said Link, whose group feeds the animals in the shelter, operates a pet food bank and feeds more than 400 feral cats.
FreeKibble was so successful, a sister site, FreeKibbleKat was created.
Over 35,000 people visit the sites each day, feeding 1,200 dogs and cats daily.
"It’s also creating an awareness and getting people to be more involved with their local shelters," said Mr. Ausland. "Donations have gone from 600 pounds in June to 16,000 pounds in September after Mimi made appearances on NBC news and the ‘Today’ show." (sorry, couldn’t find the video)
Richard Thompson, founder of zootoo.com, said he’s proud of what a sixth-grader has been able to do. As an insider in the pet food industry, he coordinates the food contributions for Mimi and said he plans to continue to do it no matter how popular the site gets.
"Right now it’s about half a tractor-trailer load a month," Thompson said. "If it gets to be eight, nine or 10 truckloads, then we might have to build a bloody facility, but we’ll continue to support her."
Mimi sits atop one of the first deliveries of food to her local shelter in central Oregon. (Photo credit: Kelly Ausland)
The Atlanta Journal Constitution was the source article for this diary.
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A comment from by gustynpip below tells about another site that's been doing this same thing for a long time - theanimalrescuesite.com
... my shelter is trying desperately to be one of the winners, since we're small and in dire need. So if you go on and wanted to make a kossack very happy, you could then click vote here, and vote for menominee animal shelter in MI. We're working SO hard and are like 211th right now in the country - which is phenomenal for one of the smallest shelters. The prize would be a HUGE boost for us!!
shelter challenge