Donate at FreeRice

arbalest, baobab, caries, copacetic, coriaceous, lapidary, sinistral, taboret...

What do these words have in common?

Well, they all managed to remain undiscovered by me until today.

I came across FreeRice.com via one of the monthly e-newsletters I subscribe to.

I went there out of curiosity and stayed there for a while, addicted. It is a vocabulary test you can play for as long as you want, and with each correct answer, you end up donating rice grains for U.N World Food Program.

There are fifty levels. Every time you get three words correct in a row, you go up a level. And, you drop down a level if you get them wrong. Apparently it is rare for players to cross level 48.

I had to quit at level 42 in about 10 minutes of play (I was playing during my lunch time at work and it didn't feel right, tut-tut indeed), after donating only about 1980 grains of rice, vowing to keep revisiting as often as I can, as 1980 grains of rice seems too little to feed even one child for one day...

One might wonder why set up this game at all, why not give the rice away.. Reading their FAQ was quite interesting.

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.