Group Turns to Online Game to Help Feed Poor People

Throughout history, many ways have been tried to help get those with money, to give some of it up to help those less fortunate. Quite often, such efforts focus on the most basic of needs, and that is generally food. Without it of course, people cannot survive. Now, a new group has created a web site, called FreeRice, that pairs the worldwide online community and corporate advertisers who together help feed people who are literally starving.

According to an article on the Huffington Post, the site was created and is run by the United Nations World Food Program (UNWFP), and the idea is to provide immediate food to those who need it most, anywhere in the world. Right now, that place is Cambodia, where draught has put millions of people at risk of starvation.

The site works like this, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. When visitors stop by the site, they are asked random questions, when the answer correctly, rice is added to a virtual bowl shown on screen. The more questions that are answered correctly the more rice builds up. Meanwhile, as visitors try to answer questions, ads are shown at the bottom of the screen, and that sponsor ponies up money to pay for the rice the visitor has earned. The real rice is then sent to a place where someone is starving.

It appears to be working as the site is announcing that this month the millionth person dropped by to play the game, which thus far has added up to ninety four billion grains of rice being sent to some five million people who needed it.

Because the project is run by the WNWFP, people that are in dire straights can be targeted very quickly, which quite often means buying rice locally. In the most recent case for example, rice has been purchased in other parts of Cambodia not affected by the drought, which is then sent by train to the people who need it. A very quick and efficient way to help people who cannot wait.

The Herald reports that the FreeRice game project is just one among many computer and video games that are being paired with social causes to affect change in the world, a move that is either good or bad depending which side of the ideological debate you happen to be sitting on. The movement is called "serious games" and it first made its appearance as a vehicle for creating awareness of the genocide going in the Sudan a few years ago. Since that time, the movement has branched out to include virtually any topic, though few no doubt, are as serious and helpful as FreeRice.