Freerice

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Freerice is a non-profit website whose users can donate grains of rice for the hungry by answering multiple-choice questions . It finances itself and its donations through advertising and the rice is distributed to those in need by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) .

According to the WFP, 20,000 grains of rice are enough to feed an adult for a day . In the first eleven months since it went into operation on October 7, 2007, more than 43 billion grains of rice were donated via the site, i.e. around 2,150,000 daily rations. By the beginning of February 2008, the website operator had donated US $ 213,000 to the WFP, and the first rice deliveries paid for by this money were distributed in Bangladesh .

Rules of the game

Visitors to the website are shown an English word and four definitions for it. If you choose the right one, Freerice will donate 10 grains of rice to the WFP. Then the next word is presented. The user determines the end of the game. The visitor can also choose another area of ​​responsibility, including:

  • Humanities : famous paintings (the visitor is shown a painting and has to choose who painted it), literature, famous quotes, world hunger
  • Mathematics : multiplication tables , basic knowledge
  • Language learning : French, German, Italian , Spanish , Latin
  • Chemistry : chemical symbols
  • English : grammar
  • Geography : capitals , identify countries on the map

Learning effect

The difficulty of the vocabulary is measured on a scale from 1 (very easy) to 60 and is constantly updated based on the answers received from all users. The first four answers of each game are used to determine a user-specific level of difficulty. From the fifth question onwards, the level of difficulty is increased by 1 for every three correct answers in a row, and decreased by 1 for every wrong answer. This system enables individual learning . The fact that the target word can be heard as an audio file also contributes to learning success .

Award

The website was named "Find of the Year" 2007 by Yahoo in the Charity category.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Web game provides rice for hungry , BBC News. November 10, 2007. 
  2. FreeRice: Totals ( Memento from February 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed December 7, 2007).
  3. FreeRice in the WFP's video log ( memento from March 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on February 7, 2008).
  4. Find of the Year 2007, Category Charity (accessed February 7, 2008)