For all of my good intentions for making the world a better place, I still have some bad habits. Like reading People magazine (yes, I even have a subscription). In my defense, People is the least raggy, trashy magazine of all the rags at the checkout line. One regular column that they have in each magazine is "Heroes Among Us". This week, the featured person is John Breen, the founder of the site Free Rice (http://www.freerice.com/). Breen is a father of son who is preparing for the SATs. Going above the call of duty, he created a program for his son to use to practice vocabulary words in preparation for the test. He then took it one step further, launching the Free Rice web site, which pairs his vocabulary testing program with corporate advertising. So, where does the free rice come in? For every vocabulary word that you correctly match to its synonym (out of 4 choices), 20 grains of rice is donated to the U.N. World Food Program; the rice is purchased from the proceeds of the corporate advertising. I just played for 20 minutes and was able to get 2,000 grains of rice donated - and I found out that I know the meaning of more words that I thought I did. And this program is designed for all ability levels - ESL speakers, middle & high school students, college students, job interviewees, etc. To date, 21.5 billion grains of rice have been donated, which equates to feeding about 1 million people for a day. Not too bad for a web site that launched only 5 months ago!
So, whenever you get a few extra minutes on your hands, go over to Free Rice and brush up on some vocabulary. Not only will you help a needy cause, but you'll even get a little smarter!
Take Care,
Kara
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