FreeRice: Help world hunger by playing with words
By Jenny Symons
FreeRice is an interesting, quirky new fundraising concept, one that capitalises on people's competitive streak by giving them a chance to test their command of English. It's a web game that provides rice for the hungry.
When you visit www.freerice.com, you're given a word along with four possible meanings. To play the game, you click one answer. Every time you get a right answer, Free Rice donates 20 grains to the UN World Food Program. You can play as long as you like and you gradually move up through different levels of difficulty.
When you get a word wrong, the right meaning flashes and the word is presented again later and keeps on being repeated until you get it right. In this way, FreeRice is not only a means of testing your vocabulary but also a teaching aid, enabling people to easily acquire and understand lots of new words. For those with a love of words, the game can be quite addictive. Each correct answer gives you a buzz and then there's the constant challenge of trying to get to the next level. And, of course, there's always the satisfaction of knowing you're doing a bit towards helping feed the hungry of the world.
FreeRice went online in early October 2007 and, by early November 2007, the website had already raised one billion grams of rice! Twenty grains may not sound like much, but your contribution quickly builds up and, with lots of people all over the world playing the game, in its first five months FreeRice generated enough rice to feed more than one million people.
The donations are funded by the sponsors who advertise on the site and the site itself is backed by Poverty.com
FreeRice is fun for everyone at every level and by the time you get to the higher levels (40 to 60), you can learn some real 'show off' words. Who would challenge someone who throws words into the conversation such as passade (equine manoeuvre), detrude (push down), huckaback (cotton for towels), scandent (climbing) or puissant (powerful)?
Spend a few fun minutes indulging in a game against yourself and see how far you can go.
As the Los Angeles Times commented: "FreeRice is one of the most ingenious websites of 2007. In the best spirit of the internet, it offers education, entertainment and a way to change the world – all for free."
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