I’m in two minds about Freerice.com.
My problem is this. I’m all for giving rice to hungry folks. However, I’m not at all fond of people who take advantage of other peoples compassion to make a buck.
Every time you get a question right, 10 grains of rice are given to the World Food Programme. Huzzah! If you get the question wrong, no rice is given, even though you still see the same number of advertising banners. The crux of the matter is, how much is 10 grains of rice worth?
According to this there are 36,590 grains of rice to the kilo. So you have to get 3659 questions correct to provide 1 kilo of rice.
Now it gets harder. Finding out the wholesale price of rice is proving a little tricky. Especially as I suspect the UN sends low quality rice, as lets face it, hungry people don’t complain about it being a bit rusky, and buying the cheap stuff means you can send a whole lot more.
Now, according to this, in 2005, low quality rice was $275 per metric tonne. Thus the price for a kilo was 27.5 cents.
So, we’re at a minimum of 3659 page views for 27.5 cents worth of rice, and that is assuming you get every question right. Now things get even hazier, as I have no way of knowing how much all those big corporations are paying for ad space. I suspect they’re paying fairly well, given the excellent PR they get for being involved, but theres no way to know for sure.
Free Rice is rather evasive in the information it is willing to share about itself. It should be noted that it is owned by John Breen, the gentleman who set up The Hunger Site, which was also a for-profit enterprise, and later sold it for rather a lot of money.
I think what I’m trying to say, is that if you really want to help hungry people eat, give a dollar directly to the world food programme. Your carpal tunnels will thank you, and you won’t have inadvertently made an extremely adept social engineer even richer than he already is.
What do you think? Is it alright for someone to get rich off a site like Freerice, so long as some of the money gets sent to the WFP, or do you, like me, feel uneasy at that?