Just found this web site via Digg this morning while checking my email. It is a site set-up through the folks at poverty.com to help raise awareness and support for world hunger. Here's how it works...

Head over to FreeRice.com and start matching vocabulary words with synonyms. It starts fairly easy and adjusts itself to your skill level, detecting what word to ask next based on if you answered the last one correctly or not. For every correct match it donates 10 grains of rice on your behalf through an international aid agency. If you get a question wrong, it doesn't do anything. :-)

On the face of it, I have to admit I was a little unsure about the whole prospect. It just comes off as a little cheap to me. How in the world are 10 grains of rice really going to make a difference? But then I realized that just might be the point. Here's what I think the site accomplishes...

1. It's fun, and slightly addictive - if nothing else you have a good time playing along.
2. It reeks of inadequacy - you can't help but feel like you're not really making that big of a difference.
3. Collectively, it does make a difference - millions of people playing = real help - all paid for by the sponsors on the site (which from the pages I saw were big companies like Liz Claiborne, Toshiba, Radisson Hotels & Resorts, & Apple).
4. It raises awareness - One of the main points of the site, I believe
5. It increases the opportunity to do more - Coupled with #2 above, I found myself pretty quickly on the poverty.com site reading about what else/more I could do to help