Freerice: an ambitious goal

all pictures by Google images

Are you looking for an original way to assess the wideness of your vocabulary? And are you interested in helping poor people who have to fight against famine day after day? Strange but true, now you can combine this two interests of yours just with a click!!! Surfing the Net I ran into a very interesting website called FreeRice: it is a sort of quiz, in which you can choose among four options the correct definition of the word you read on the screen, but each time you give the right answer you donate a handful of grains of rice to the people living in the developing countries. I think it's a wonderful idea!!! I was afraid that it could be the umpteenth fraud, so I visited the website carefully and I discovered that this game is part of the United Nations World Food Program. FreeRice was launched just few months ago, in October 2007, but since then almost 20 billions of grains have already been donated to feed people from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Uganda and many other countries in which hunger is still a major problem. Please, take a moment to watch this video and understand the importance of this project!

Here are the answers to some of the questions you may have about FreeRice taken directly for the website:
"If FreeRice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?
FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 20 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.
Does FreeRice make any money from this?
No, it does not. FreeRice runs the site at no profit.
Who distributes the donated rice?
The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy.

Will the rice I donate make a difference?
The rice you donate makes a huge difference to the person who receives it. According to the United Nations, about 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."

And don't forget that learning new vocabulary can have inimaginable benefits for us who are supposed to use languages for our job as well!!! So what can I say? Have fun saving people, but watch out: words are not so easy as you may think...:-D

Exams scare me!

picture by Google images

I chose this picture because I found it quite realistic and perfectly suitable to this period of the year, don't you think so? I apologize for having abandoned my beloved blog for a while, but exams have started and the time to devote to this pleasant activity is not much... By the way, this morning I have taken the exam of "Letteratura inglese contemporanea": the program of the course was really interesting and dealt with the literature produced in English language by black people living in the former colonies of the British empire. The exam was oral, so it was a good opportunity to practice my oral skills once again - and it's never enough!!! I was SOOOOO NERVOUS, guys, you can't imagine! I was literally trembling when the teacher asked me the first question, but, luckily, I knew the answer: the more I talked, the more my self-confidence increased and at last I passed the exam! I'm very happy right now, but I know that there are still many other tests to come for all of us, so...broke our legs, guys!!!