ten ₱esos

I found FreeRice.com, a website committed to ending hunger. Advertising sponsors pay the UN World Food Program for our participation in an online vocabulary game. For each word shown in turn, click on one of the four given possible definitions or synonyms. Every correct answer gains 20 grains of rice for the poor, donated by the sponsors.

The site reads, “If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word.” I gave 162 correct answers before I quit. So the generosity of corporate sponsors netted 3240 grains of rice for the poor.

I’ve just found that the site has other quiz topics, shown when you click the “SUBJECTS” tab.

In countries where rice is a staple of the diet, the World Food Program provides about 400 grams of rice per person, per day. WFP says that there are about 48 grains of rice in a gram, which is hard to believe. That must be milled, refined, bare, white rice. Still it’s hard to believe that 48 grains only weigh one gram. A two-meal diet of 400 grams of rice per day requires 19,200 grains! Can that be correct? Can you eat 19,000 grains of rice per day? I think that someone’s math is awry.

FreeRice.com began in October 2007. Each month since, the sponsors have paid for 2 billion to 6.9 billion grains of rice for our poor brothers and sisters in developing countries. 67 million grains of rice were donated yesterday. More than 41 billion grains have been donated so far, which is to say 850 metric tons or 1700 imperial tons.

The World Food Program feeds our hungriest brothers and sisters. Often WFP purchases rice in the countries where the beneficiaries are, reducing transportation time and cost and helping to stimulate local economies. The first FreeRice donations purchased rice in Bangladesh, to feed 27,000 refugees from Myanmar, and in Cambodia, Uganda, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar (Burma).

I encourage you to visit FreeRice.com and play to win food for our brethren. It costs us nothing but time.