FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. The purpose is to raise rice for hungry people in third world countries. You test your vocabulary or knowledge in other subjects. Every time you get an answer correct, 10 grains of rice are donated by the organization.
From Wikipedia:
"In its first six months of operation, Freerice donated over 42 billion grains of rice. One month after the inception of the viral marketing program, users had earned enough points for one billion grains of rice. The United Nation's World Food Programme stated that this amount could feed 50,000 people for one day, since it takes 400 grams or about 19,200 grains of rice to feed one adult for a day. Using this calculation, enough rice was donated in 2008 to feed over 6,000 people daily for each day of that year.."
The two goals of the site are 1) to feed the hungry, and 2) to help educate people. I find it useful for helping to improve my vocabulary and other knowledge. Since I joined the site, several other subject areas have been added. Yesterday I spent some time on the geography site and got a better idea of where a lot of countries are located geographically.
I spent some time in the chemistry section. I really suck at remembering the symbols and misidentify the same symbols over and over again. It doesn't matter. I got enough correct answers to earn a couple of thousand grains. And a few of the symbols finally sunk into my brain!
When I logged on a few days ago I noticed that there is a group option. I found one of the high ranking groups is a high school from my old neighborhood and they've donated over 2 million grains. The highest ranking group has donated 58 million.
I think if we had a Daily Kos team, we might be able to beat that. Most people on this site are compassionate and don't like the idea that people in the world are hungry. I think a lot of Kossacks are educated and would like to improve their skills. Especially verbal skills. Playing around on freerice.com for only a few minutes a day -- or even a week -- could help feed thousands if we do it collectively.
I'll admit, another motivation for me is that in a way I'm competitive, but only as part of a group. I would love Daily Kos to get a high ranking. And I have this kind of silly idea that we could challenge other sites, e.g., free republic.
I don't know how realistic that is, but I thought I'd give it a try. Meteor Blades said it's okay to use Daily Kos as a name for the group and link to it, so here we go:
Main page:
www.freerice.com
go to Groups and search for Daily Kos.
http://freerice.com/...