Free Rice

Nothing is really free, is it? Somebody has to pay for everything that changes hands whether it's lunch or health care or rice given to the needy.

Poverty.com has a sister site—freerice.com. Because nothing is free, the sponsors have come up with a gimmick—a vocabulary quiz. As you play, with each correct answer, the sponsors whose ads run along the bottom of the screen donate ten grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Ten grains doesn't sound like much by itself, but the site generates nearly 200,000,000 grains a day. The power of words.

At first I, wasn't sure what to make of the thing. I was almost immediately addicted to the quiz, but I had questions about the program. The FAQ page answered two of them right off the bat.

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

Does FreeRice make any money from this?

FreeRice and its sister site Poverty.com have not made a penny from this. Nor does it cost us much, as our only significant expense is our servers.

So, during this week of being thankful for our relative bounty, let's all play FreeRice and spread some of that bounty around the world.