Go to the FREE RICE website and test your knowlegdge in vocabulary, geography, grammar or even mathematics. Every correct answer means 20 grains of rice for someone in need. (Erin and I donated 3500 grains yesterday)
Peel yourself away from you-tube and facebook and make a difference.
2 comments:
Now that was interesting. I spent about 10 minutes going through English vocabulary and World Geography, and donated 1,500 grains of rice! It's part of the UN World Food Programme, which holds a special place in my heart. Why, you ask?
In 1978, while working for the OECD in Paris, I prepared working papers for the up coming World Food Conference in Rome. One of the topics I wrote a paper on were "Food Self Sufficiency," which charted the correlation between production of cash crops (coffee, for example) versus staple crops (corn, rice) and the prosperity of a country. In other words, were countries better able to feed their people if they grew grains for internal consumption, or grew cash crops to sell, which earned money to buy staples. Well, you can guess what the answer was - it was always better to grow their own food. One of the problems with selling crops to buy staples was corruption (of course), but also the issue of subsistence farming versus mega farming. When there's profit involved, the best land gets bought by more well to do farmers and they grow cash crops. When a country encourages growing its own food, some farmers may do less well, but on the whole, more farmers prosper, less land is cleared for farming (resulting in less "desertification"), resources are preserved and the country is better nourished. Or at least that was my conclusion 30 years ago.
Wish I had the time to update that study! It was fun.
Is it time to stop seeing how well we can live, pool our resources, and try an intergenerational effort to educate and help those in need?
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