Thursday, November 22, 2007

Action: Learn New Words, Give Free Rice To The Hungry



Cross-posted at MyDD

Sitting there and feeling fat after diner? Do something to help those who aren't so fortunate on this Thanksgiving night. Simply by choosing the right answer to a word definition problem you donate 10 grains of rice to the hungry. It's real, the United Nations World Food Program distributes the rice and the advertisements on the page pay for it. You can keep on doing it forever but if you get lots of words right it gets harder, if you get questions wrong it gets easier.

This is the essence of the netroots, it's the essence of the internet. It's a easy simple concept and it can help feed the hungry. A quote from their FAQ page sums it up:
bout 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children. To a mother or father watching a loved child die in their arms from hunger, the rice you donate is more precious than anything in the world.


I know this isn't politically related but as Paul Wellstone said "Politics is about the improvement of people's lives." and this is just too good of a e-innovation not to share.

Today as we give thanks for what we have, let us do more then feel good about ourself. Let us give everyone the chance to be thankful. Isn't that what it's all about? I know we all have our candidates and we get worked up about them but for one day can we all stand united behind a common cause of justice?

I am starting a challenge, I've gotten enough answers right to donate 860 grains of rice, the amount that was donated on Free Rice's first day (Now close to 200,000 grains are donated per day) I will get enough right to get 140 more grains of rice donated.

Now the challenge: Can I get people to get 100 answers right and match my 1,000 grains of rice?

Twice the impact and only a little bit of time. My last diary made it on to the recommended list and had 276 comments. If instead of commenting on that diary those people had got one answer right 2,760 grains of rice would have been donated to the hungry.

If you're up for it go do you're words and then come and report how many grains of rice are in you're bowl and I will add you to the list

1. Populista 860
2. You?
3. You?
4. You?
5. You?
6. You?
7. You?
8. You?
9. You?
10. You?
11. You?

"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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