Donating rice on Freerice.com

Freerice cover photo on Facebook

To help stop world hunger, from October 11th to present day, I donated 30 minutes of my lunch break on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to playing the game on Freerice. I also utilized Facebook and Twitter to update others of my progress in rice donation, to promote the Freerice program, and to educate others on current malnutrition crisis and hunger issues.The minor difference of my action in comparison to my original plan is that due to demanding school work I started my action on Oct 11^th, which is 10 days later than originally planned. During rewarding this experience, I was able to inspire two friends to join me in the fight against world hunger, and together we raised 20,050 grains of rice to feed starving school children in Cambodia.

Cambodia is one of the most impoverished countries in Southeast Asia, with 1.7 million people suffering from food insecurity (World Food Programme, 2011). High poverty rates, and limited social protection coverage prevents households from accessing sufficient and nutritious food (World Food Programme, 2014a). In addition, Cambodia is highly vulnerable to natural disasters such as localized droughts, and floods from the monsoon season that severely damage the rice crops (World Food Programme, 2014a).

39.9% of Cambodian children under 5 are chronically malnourished, and suffer from growth stunting, decreased cognitive development, and increased susceptibility to diseases (World Food Programme, 2014b). Malnutrition continues to be prevalent within school-age children, and it contributes to high drop-out and low retention rates (World Food Programme, 2011). Education plays an important role in addressing the issues of world hunger, and through providing free rice to Cambodian school children, I hope to increase their attendance rates in school and help them break the cycle of malnutrition.

Profile on Freerice.com

Our world extend beyond our homes, our local community, and our country, and this valuable experience reminded me of my responsibilities to help those in need. I have always believed that humans have a fundamental right to food, and through completing this assignment I was able to transform my beliefs into realistic action plans to relieve world hunger. Through learning more about the hunger issues around the world, I was connected with heartbreaking stories of Cambodian school children scrounging for meals in the garbage dumps when they should be learning in school. Although it was challenging for me to balance donating my time to playing on Freerice alongside my demanding schedule, learning about the chronic hunger issues in Cambodia encouraged me to uphold my commitment.

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.

A tweet to educate others on world hunger

I truly believe I made a difference in helping to stop world hunger. I am pleased and thrilled to find out that all of our efforts will lead to feeding a starving child two full meals so he/she will have will have enough energy to pay attention in class for at least one day. In addition, I feel to have made a difference through educating my family, friends, and colleagues of the hunger issues around the world, and inspiring them to take time out of their busy schedules to help alleviate this issue.

Friends playing on Freerice.com to help relieve world hunger

Through working on this assignment I recognized the importance of educating and inspiring others to join the fight against world hunger. Working as a team has increased the total number of rice grains raised from 10,670 grains to 20,050 grains. Although the total number of rice grains raised still seems minuscule, however, if we combine the effort of over one million unique players that play the game on Freerice every month, the amount of rice we have raised is immense (Freerice, 2012). In 2013, the combined efforts of all players led to Freerice donating 5,726,897,740 grains of rice to feed Cambodian school children (Freerice, 2014).

The prevalence of world hunger appears to be common knowledge, but through discussions with family and friends, I realized that they knew very little about the on-going chronic hunger in Cambodia, and the potential actions we can take to alleviate this issue. I believe that most people hold altruistic virtues, but without knowledge of world hunger they cannot utilize their potential to take action. So to inspire others to take action against world hunger and malnutriton, we must first empower them through education.

A Tweet to promote Freerice after the end of my commitment

I originally planned to support the school food programme in Cambodia through rice donations until November 15th, but playing on Freerice has become a weekly habit that I want to commit to even beyond the end of this assignment. In addition, the multiple drivers of undernutrition requires multiple approaches to address this issue, so I am also planning to explore more options to stop world hunger. Reducing excess consumption and waste, and making donations to international food aid organizations are some of the choice I am considering to help relieve this issue.

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