Inspiration: John Breen

This is a different kind of inspiration... not design or art, but an amazing concept to help end world hunger.

John Breen is a computer programmer from Indiana who created freerice.com in October 2007. The idea is that you participate in a vocabulary game and for each word you get correct 20 grains of rice are donated to help feed people in need. This is done via the UN World Food Program (WFP) in countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Uganda and Burma.

The money to buy the grains of rice is donated by sponsors in exchange for advertising on the website. The sponsors' money goes directly to WFP which then distributes the donations. WFP works with more than 3000 organisations in more that 75 countries, and is the world's largest food assistance agency. As well as providing food, WFP works to make people self-reliant.

When he created the site John Breen personally typed in all 10,000 definitions for the vocab game. He also created thehungersite.com, therainforestsite.com and poverty.com. One month after freerice.com went live users had accrued enough points to feed 50,000 people for one day - that's one billion grains of rice!

When I did the vocab game yesterday I contributed 1200 grains of rice in a short space of time - it's easy and fun. You can even choose other subjects, like maths, chemistry and geography if vocab isn't your thing. If 20 of us contribute 1,000 grains of rice today it will be enough to feed one adult for a day. Please take the time to visit freerice.com and contribute. I have added a permanent link to freerice.com on my blog - if you scroll down you'll see it in the right hand column.

From time to time I'm sure we all think that as 'just one person' we can't help change the world...what an inspiration John Breen is! And better still, he's giving all of us the opportunity to help too.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------