Total rice grains raised from Freerice

Donation to the World Food Programme

The World Food Programme provides on average 400 grams of rice per person (including children and adults), per day to feed them for two meals (Freerice, 2007). The 20,050 grains of rice raised from playing on Freerice as a group equated to 417.7 grams of rice and 1,495.37 kcal (Condé Nast, 2014). This amount of rice will feed one Cambodian child for a little over two meals.Through educating my family and friends of world hunger issues, and the Freerice website , I was able to motivate two of my friends to donate their time to playing on Freerice. In addition, I inspired one family member to donate $25 towards the World Food Programme in support of providing nutritious meals to school children.

417.7 grams of rice seems microscopic compared to Cambodia’s total rice consumption of 2.1 million tonnes of rice per year (Reuy, 2013). Therefore a limitation to playing Freerice within a small team is the lack of efficiency to raise enough rice grains to regularly and sufficiently feed a large population of people. In addition, micronutrient deficiencies, such iron, vitamin A, and iodine are currently a major health concern in Cambodia (World Food Programme, 2014a). Rice by itself is low in micronutrients and must be consumed with a diverse variety of food to meet one’s dietary needs (Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, 2014). Therefore focusing solely on rice donation will not lead to food security among all people. Also, Freerice’s efforts to expand their influence through a quiz game does not sufficiently educate players on the issues of world hunger. The quiz questions are not related to world hunger, and the webpage contains minimal information pertaining to these issues which may lead to a disconnection between playing the game and fighting against world hunger.