Build Your Vocabulary and Feed the Hungry

Thanks to a recent post at One Step Forward, I’ve discovered Free Rice.

The site offers a vocabulary quiz, requiring you to click on one of four definitions for the word given. The degree of difficulty of the words you are asked is determined by your answers. If you miss an answer, you are given words at the next lower level of difficulty. If you get three right answers in a row, you move to the next level of difficulty. This is a fun and innovative way to increase your vocabulary.

But there’s an added benefit: for every right answer you give, Free Rice will donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. Ten grains doesn’t sound like much, but if thousands of people participate, the amount of rice grows rapidly. Free Rice started October 7th and has already donated nearly 300 million grains of rice. The rice is paid for by advertisers on the site.

The Hunger Site has been online since 1999 and has raised more than 500 million cups of food. The donations go to Mercy Corps and America’s Second Harvest. All you have to do to donate a cup of food is to click on a link, and advertisers contribute the cost of the food. On the same site, you can click to donate for other causes: breast cancer, children’s health, literacy (a favorite of mine as a writer and reader), rainforest, and animal rescue.

Several years ago, I wrote an article about click-to-give Web sites. Many sites have come and gone through the years, but this advice from that article is still sound:

As with offline charities, you need to do a little research to determine which charitable sites to frequent. First, you want to be sure the money is going to a cause and an organization you support. The button may say “click to help children” or “click to fight cancer,” but you may have delve a little deeper to find exactly which organizations receive the funds. The best sites include detailed information about each organization that receives support, so take a few minutes the first time you visit to ensure that you agree with the group’s philosophy.

With Free Rice , you can help feed the hungry, have some fun, and increase your own vocabulary – surely worth a few minutes of your time.

[tags]Free Rice, charity Web sites, vocabulary[/tags]