A small morsel of charity

We all know (thanks to the fantastic work of Loam et al), that the price of rice has been skyrocketing this year by as much as 150% in some countries.

The effect of this is abundantly clear. It means suffering hunger in places where food was scarce, and where hunger already existed... inevitable death is the outcome.

Do you think that you are helpless to change the situation? Well certainly you may not be able to change the entire scenario, but here's a website which will let you contribute in a meaningful way by practicing your vocabulary skills while feeding the hungry.

www.freerice.com...


Im not sure if this contravenes the no- advertisement rule or not... but I believe that this website is a clear way for members to do a little bit. To borrow a phrase from Tesco, "Every little helps".

Hey SS, that's a great site! Thanks for posting this. I donated 1,060 grains of rice in only 5 minutes and I learned new words while helping to feed the poor! What a deal!
Star for you.

Thank you for the site. Great way to donate to the hungry and to educate yourself.

If only this really works. I hope so.

They have so far raised 27 billion grains of rice for the hungry, which according to my calculations equates to about 810 000 kilograms, or 810 tonnes of rice!

Educating the donators, and feeding the hungry in one fell swoop!

Feel free to post your vocab level folks, could be an interesting competition to see who gets the highest grain count, highest vocab level etc!

So far today: Edit: Level 47 at the moment, but mentally I feel like a fat hamster running at its peak in a running wheel! I doubt I can go much further than 47! Rice tally up to 7k though, which is nice.

[edit on 16-4-2008 by 44soulslayer]

Hey another good idea, 44. I've already posted that I gave 1,060 grains. I plan to visit it everyday. My score was 42. I was always good at spelling and vocabulary and I'm a writer so I think that helps. But there were still words I didn't know.
I think a contest is a good idea 44.

Excellent score!

I need to start considering the words more carefully before clicking if I am to have a chance in hell of beating your score!

Edit: Do you think that we should run it officially to get more people involved?
If i contact SO, or a supermod I could suggest that we offer 5000 points for highest score; 5000 for most rice donated etc.

We could take screenshots to prove the scores etc. And of course, raise tonnes of rice in the process! I wager a concerted effort from ATS members for a day could feed a family for a year!

[edit on 16-4-2008 by 44soulslayer]

Great site.
I donated 860 grains of rice and got a score of 53 - but I think I may have been a bit lucky with the words I got...

Oh, I've already hit this site to death a while back. It's a great idea and there was a bug where you could keep refreshing the page to add more rice to the bowl.

Glad to see that the site has taken off and is as popular as it should be.

Excellent find! im passing the web address on to everyone i know

1180grains yay

Out of curiosity, has anyone found any figures on how many grains of rice equal a nourishing meal for a hungry child?

Rather oddly, I was doing the calculations just as you asked the question!

6200 grains of rice is one meal for a child based on the calculation:

1 grain of rice weighs 30mg

A nutritious meal of rice is 186 grams; providing about 300 calories.

Thus 186000/ 30 = 6200

Collectively, we have already fed a couple of children today. Spread the word, good people, spread the word.