Helping the hungry for free

Hunger is a relative term. Here in America, where a report released this week shows hunger among kids is growing, the government uses the obnoxious euphemism “low food security” to classify people who struggle to eat enough food and who cope in many ways, from eating less varied foods to taking part in Federal programs such as the school lunch program.

Roughly one American in eight suffers from food insecurity and in Mississippi it’s more than 17%. Ironically, one of the two states with the highest growth in hunger — 3.7% — is handout-happy, share-the-wealth Alaska. The other is Iowa.

But there’s an enormous difference between having to decide what and how much one can afford to eat and whether to eat at all. Millions around the world are in the latter group and sometimes, there’s no decision to be made because there simply is no food. And that’s where you and I come in.

I wrote last year about Free Rice, the online program that feeds the world’s hungry through the UN World Food Program by donating rice that we earn for them by playing a vocabulary game. Free Rice has been a success, generating enough rice to feed 2 million people since it began last October, and has expanded so that we have more quizzes to earn the rice. Participation by us, sad to say, is down.

The vocabulary quizzes are multi-lingual now, so if you’d like to brush up on your French, Italian, German or Spanish, here’s your chance. Sticklers for grammar *cough* have a quiz now too. If you’re good at geography, math or science, you’re covered. Chemistry fans, if you know those blasted symbols that elude me, it’s your chance to shine. With all the quizzes, any questions you get wrong will come back over and over until you learn them. And when you do, another 20 grains of rice go into your virtual bowl to be donated to the hungry.

My favorite is the art quiz, where I can rest my eyes, nourish my soul and donate thousands of grains in a short time. The quiz is heavy on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art; Van Gogh, my favorite, is strongly represented among Post-Impressionists and many are from the final years of his life, when he was ill and used heavy brushstrokes. So here’s a cheat sheet. The painting here is from the quiz and has those typical brush strokes. When you see them, guess Van Gogh. Renaissance artists also pop up frequently and by level 10, there are many Asian artists new to me, but I’m always happy to guess and to learn.

So when you have a spare moment, please click on over, choose a quiz topic and help the hungry. The FAQ has detailed information and further resources for fighting hunger and there are linked HTML badges and banners to put on your own site. The Totals page shows exactly how much has been donated; I’m sad to see participation by Internet users has declined since Free Rice swept the online world like a fad. World hunger is not a fad.