Foreign Policy Blogs

Win-win-win for fighting hunger

Is it possible to make a difference in the fight against global hunger from your computer?  Organizations that are dedicated to fighting hunger work approach this challenge in many ways, and must dedicate a great deal of time and resources to raising funds to support their programs.

The United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) for example, created a web site called Free Rice, which has a win-win approach to fighting global hunger.  Rather than simply asking users to donate money, the site offers a variety of games that test users abilities in English, geography, chemistry, art, foreign languages and math.  When a user answers a question correctly, they earn 10 grains of rice for the World Food Programme to use in fighting hunger.  How does this work?  According to the Free Rice website:

The rice [donated to WFP] is paid for by the sponsors whose names you see on the bottom of your screen when you enter a correct answer. These sponsors support both learning (free education for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry).

So visitors to the site raise money for WFP just by playing (win), the sponsoring companies fund the game and gain visibility (win), and WFP acquires more support for their mission (win).