Free Rice

After gorg­ing on Cha Kua Teow (sic) yes­ter­day, it so hap­pened that we stum­bled upon freerice.com, where we spent a cou­ple of hours spar­ing a thought, sev­eral hun­dred words and grains of rice for the needy:

Fre­quently Asked Ques­tions
How does play­ing the vocab­u­lary game at FreeRice help me?

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 cou­ple of days, 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.
How does the FreeRice vocab­u­lary pro­gram work?

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 between are thou­sands of words for stu­dents, busi­ness peo­ple, home­mak­ers, doc­tors, truck dri­vers, retired peo­ple… everyone!

FreeRice auto­mat­i­cally adjusts to your level of vocab­u­lary. It starts by giv­ing you words at dif­fer­ent lev­els of dif­fi­culty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approx­i­mate start­ing level. You then deter­mine a more exact level for your­self as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an eas­ier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keep­ing you at the “outer fringe” of your vocab­u­lary, where learn­ing can take place.

There are 50 lev­els in all, but it is rare for peo­ple to get 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.
What hap­pens if my com­puter sud­denly loses power while I am in the mid­dle of play­ing? Does my dona­tion still count?

Yes, once your screen says that you have donated a cer­tain amount of rice, that means our server has reg­is­tered it. For exam­ple, sup­pose your screen says that you have donated 120 grains of rice. If your com­puter then sud­denly loses power, or you close your browser, or you click to go some­where else, your dona­tion has already been counted.
Who pays for the donated rice?

The rice is paid for by the adver­tis­ers whose names you see on the bot­tom of your 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). We com­mend these com­pa­nies for their par­tic­i­pa­tion at FreeRice.
If FreeRice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?

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, adver­tise­ments appear on the bot­tom of your screen. The money gen­er­ated by these adver­tise­ments is then used to buy the rice. So by play­ing, you gen­er­ate the money that pays for the rice donated to hun­gry peo­ple.
Who dis­trib­utes the donated rice?

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. We encour­age you to visit the United Nations World Food Pro­gram to learn more about their suc­cess­ful approach to end­ing hunger.
Will the rice I donate make a difference?

The rice you donate makes a huge dif­fer­ence to the per­son who receives it. To a mother or father watch­ing a loved child die in their arms from hunger, the rice you donate is more pre­cious than any­thing in the world.
What is being done to end world hunger?

There is great progress being made to end world hunger. Many orga­ni­za­tions across the globe are involved in this strug­gle. Each day, hun­dreds of thou­sands of ordi­nary men and women work for these orga­ni­za­tions. Through their efforts, mil­lions of impov­er­ished peo­ple have food to eat, learn skills and find hope for the future.
What else can I do to help end hunger?

Here are two key things you can do to help end hunger. Both are free and easy to do.

1. Add your name to the One Cam­paign, where sev­eral mil­lion peo­ple have already joined together “as One” to end hunger and extreme poverty. If enough peo­ple join, dreams for a bet­ter world can be made into real­ity very quickly.
2. The United Nations esti­mates that the cost to end world hunger com­pletely, along with dis­eases related to hunger and poverty, is about $195 bil­lion a year. Twenty-two coun­tries have joined together to raise this money by each con­tribut­ing 0.7% (less than 1%) of national income. Some of the coun­tries have already met this goal. Oth­ers are being a lit­tle slow, but this can be fixed. You can see how the coun­tries are doing here. You can print a let­ter to sup­port your country’s par­tic­i­pa­tion here.

Where can I learn more about hunger?

One last impor­tant thing you can do to help end hunger is to become knowl­edge­able about it. A good way to do this is to visit our sis­ter site Poverty.com (designed so that busy peo­ple can learn quickly about hunger and poverty) or one of the many excel­lent sites listed here. We believe that when enough peo­ple around the world become knowl­edge­able about hunger, it will no longer be tol­er­ated.