24,954,970. That's how many grains of rice were donated to hungry people yesterday alone by a fantastic website called FreeRice.com. Since their inception in late 2007 they've donated 66 billion.
The cool part is that it doesn't cost anyone a penny to donate rice. In fact, all you do is take some fun online quizzes.
That's right. You can feed the hungry by playing games online!
If you haven't checked the website out yet, you should head over there. And while you're at it- send the link to all your friends.
Note: I am not affiliated with the site in any way. I just think it's a great idea and want to help spread the word.
More details on how it works after the fold...
FreeRice.com lets you test your knowledge in a range of different subjects and for each correct answer they donate 10 grains of rice to hungry people all over the world.
I know that 10 grains of rice doesn't seem like a lot but with thousands of people playing at once, it adds up quickly.
For example, yesterday's total alone would feed approximately 1,300 people for a whole day. (Thanks for correcting my math, Roadbed Guy. Guess I need to go back and take some more of their math quizzes!)
According to the UN, 25,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes.
Some of the quiz subjects include:
*World Geography
*Vocabulary in: English, Spanish, French, Italian & German
*For the art people, there is the Famous Paintings category
*For the math whizzes, there are math categories
Each category has different levels so kids can play as well as adults.
This is a great way for kids to learn and for adults to freshen up on some of those old subjects we learned in school.
You can even make a game out of it by challenging a friend to see who can get to the highest level, or who can get the most grains of rice in a certain time.
You may be wondering, why don't they just GIVE away the rice they have?
Here's the answer from their website:
FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice. You are earning it 10 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, sponsor banners appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these banners is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.
The goals of the site are:
- Free education
- Feeding the hungry
What a great concept! So if you're bored at work or have some time to play around, go check it out. And spread the news!
The more people that play, the more good we can do.
http://www.freerice.com/...
UPDATE: Thanks for the recs everybody! And thanks to all who said they'd pass the site on to their friends. I hope this site gets out to a lot more people now. What a great, fun, easy way for us all to make a little difference!
UPDATE X 2: Thanks to dmhlt 66 for suggesting that I add some other great sites you can visit.
- There's the hunger site: http://www.thehungersite.com/... You only have to click on it- no games.
- And then there's FreeKibble.com. http://freekibble.com/ You can play a trivia game and they will donate food to shelter animals.
- TheAnimalRescueSite.com http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/... will donate to shelter animals with just a click.
- FreeKibbleKat.com is for the kitties. http://www.freekibblekat.com/
PS- Someone needs to teach me how to put a URL up with a label on it! I'm slow when it comes to these things.