FreeRice.com builds vocabulary, feeds hungry around the world

With only a few minutes and 10 correctly answered vocabulary questions, 200 grains of rice could be donated to the United Nations World Food Programme. FreeRice.com, created by Bloomington programmer John Breen as a sister site to his Web site Poverty.com, will donate 20 grains of rice for every correctly answered vocabulary question.\nThe site works by asking the player – who doesn’t need to log in or set up an account – to match a word with one of four possible meanings: “stoat means: horsemanship, freeze-drying, peddler, ermine” (the correct answer is ermine). For every correct answer, the site’s sponsors, which include iTunes, Lego and anonymous private donors, contribute 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme. \nMartin Penner, a World Food Programme public information officer said in an e-mail that the organization feeds people in need in Nepal, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Uganda, among other countries, and Breen’s site has donated more than $250,000.\n“A lot of people have been playing, which is really nice of them,” Breen said. “It says something really nice about the human race, I think.”\nSince Breen set up the site in October 2007, he said more than 25 billion grains of rice have been earned by anonymous, thesaurus-savvy players around the world.\n“There are a lot of people who are trying to learn English who use it, especially in China, India, East Europe and Germany,” he said, adding that the number of students, from elementary to college-age, that play is a big reason for the site’s success. He describes young children who play as “purely altruistic.” \nFacebook turned up several applications and hundreds of FreeRice-related groups, including “I no longer pay attention in school because of FreeRice.com,” “I want YOU to go to freerice.com,” “Help starving people, improve vocab and procrastinate all at the same time!,” “DON’T join this group, instead go to freerice.com to help feed hungry people” and “I’ve donated at least 1,000 grains of rice to freerice.com.” Group members number in the hundreds of thousands.\nBreen also founded the Hunger Site in 1999. The Hunger Site works in essentially the same way – advertisers donate money to America’s Second Harvest and Mercy Corps. – but without the vocabulary lesson; people simply click a button on their screen to help. Breen has since turned over the site’s operations to CharityUSA.com.\n“It was too much for one person,” he said, adding that he wants to make FreeRice low-maintenance enough that he can run it himself without it consuming the majority of his time, as it does now. \nThe site has also expanded to include The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site, The Literacy Site, The Rainforest Site and The Animal Rescue Site, all of which operate the same way.\nSteve Arnold leads the Bloomington chapter of Responsibility for Ending Starvation Using Legislation, Trimtabbing and Support, an international grassroots citizens’ lobby focused on domestic and global hunger and poverty issues, and said that politically, poverty and world hunger are nonpartisan issues.\n“Nobody in any party wants to see children starving to death,” Arnold said, adding that Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is the ranking Republican member on the foreign relations committee, which initiates policy bills. “It’s a very critical position for our issues.”\nDespite his contribution to the fight against hunger and poverty, Breen insists he isn’t an activist.\n“I’m not really an activist type of person,” Breen said. “I’m really just a computer programmer.”