This vocabulary-based web initiative is designed to improve literacy and raise awareness about hunger around the world - while raising funds to feed those who are starving. For each word that the visitor to the website gets correct as he or she plays the game, 20 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations (UN) World Food Program (WFP).
This information and communication (ICT)-based project uses an edutainment strategy to provide what is intended to be a fun English vocabulary "lesson" while informing people about (and raising money to address) a development issue: hunger. FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty; there are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that are very obscure/infrequently used. The visitor to the FreeRice website begins by seeing a word, with 4 options. If the player guesses the word's meaning incorrectly, he or she sees the word's correct meaning - and then moves to an easier level. If the player gets 3 words in a row right, the next level is more challenging. Organisers say, "This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the 'outer fringe' of your vocabulary, where learning can take place."
In advance of the 2008 school year, organisers launched new games on the site in order to encourage the participation of children and youth in the effort. Players may test their knowledge of multiplication, world capital cities, chemical symbols, foreign languages, and the styles of famous painters.
FreeRice also uses the internet to raise awareness and funds, and to spark action. Links and other resources offered on the site are designed to educate people about hunger, as well as to suggest ways to help - such as by clicking on a link to print a letter to advocate for individual countries' participation in the UN's push to end world hunger.
Hunger, Literacy.
FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com, which was created by a private individual living in the United States. Click here to learn about how various countries in the world are doing in terms of donating money to meet Millennium Development Goal #1 (fight hunger and poverty).
The WFP explains that visitors to FreeRice peaked in 2007 at around 500,000 a day; as of August 2008, the site was still being regularly used by approximately 40,000 people daily. In the first 10 months since its launch, the initiative has generated more than 40 billion grains of rice in donations to WFP – enough to feed more than 2 million people for a day. So far, donations generated by the FreeRice site have been sent to feed hungry people in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Uganda.
Funding for the purchase of rice for WFP comes from private-sector sponsors who pay to advertise on the FreeRice site. In 2008, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University offered to provide servers to host the FreeRice site.
FreeRice website; email from Jennifer Parmelee to The Communication Initiative on March 12 2008; and "FreeRice Web Phenomenon - Games for New School Term", WFP Press Release dated August 31 2008, forwarded from Jennifer Parmelee to The Communication Initiative on September 2 2008.