I like living in the twenty-first century; however, I cannot deny the fact that it has its imperfections, world hunger being a major one. According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die every day from starvation or hunger-related causes. That means another person dies every three and a half seconds from these causes. Twenty-five thousand people a day is roughly 9.1 million people a year that I have no way of helping. I am merely a teen without sufficient funds, political power, or even a real say in the issue. How can I possibly make a difference? I’m not going to. Not without help.
I can make a difference in fighting world hunger with the help of thousands of other people. There is a saying that safety comes in numbers, as does change. With this world of advancing technology and media sources, it is easier to gain access to other countries across the globe. A friend recently referred me to a website, www.freerice.com, which uses the web to raise money in order to aid those in third world countries, as well as those in developed countries. The program, FreeRice, functions like an online vocabulary test and for each word you answer correctly, FreeRice donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. The rice is paid for by the advertisers seen at the bottom of the page. By playing, the advertisements appear and the money generated by the ads can be used to buy rice for hungry people.
There is a warning on the site that says: “This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance, etc.” Indeed it does help. The website has a custom database with thousands of words of varying difficulty. Depending on how many you answer correctly, the vocabulary level gets harder. Especially with SAT and ACT preparation, a little extra vocabulary practice won’t hurt. The way I see it, it’s a win-win situation. By helping myself, I help others. All prior doubts about not having the finances nor the power to help people halfway across the globe are eliminated with a program like this.
FreeRice began in early October 2007. In the first month, 500 million grains of rice were donated. In the following month, almost 4.8 billion grains of rice were donated. As more and more people hear about the website, the amount of rice donated increases in leaps. Unfortunately, the number of grains may seem like a lot but in reality, it is not.
In a very general estimate, the average person eats 75 grams of rice per serving. If the average person eats 75 grams of rice per serving and if the average grain of rice is 25 milligrams, then a person eats about 3,000 grains per meal. According to that rough estimate, FreeRice helped feed 179,054 meals (or 59,684 people for one day) in the first month. Unfortunately, that’s relatively small considering that three billion people live on less than two dollars a day. But as more and more people are educated and made aware of just how much they can do on www.freerice.com, then the numbers of grains of rice will continue to rise greatly.
Mother Teresa, one of the world’s leading altruists, said, “If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” If a hundred people each feed one person, then that is one hundred fewer people starving. If a hundred, a thousand, or possibly a million people join together to combat world hunger, the possibilities are limitless. Free Rice is simply one of the many ways that world hunger can be combated from our homes and schools.
To learn more about world hunger or how you can help end it, go to their sister site, www.poverty.com. On the left-hand column there is a link that says International Aid, where you can learn more about what can be done to help.
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