FreeRice is the amazing online game where you feed the hungry while answering questions in vocabulary and other subjects. Currently, FreeRice donations are going to Niger to help feed schoolchildren.
Last year I had the opportunity to collaborate with the FreeRice team at the UN World Food Programme (WFP). We were discussing a potential new history subject.
It was during those discussions that Dr. Al Forsyth, a retired Weber State University professor, came up with the idea of a world hunger section for the game. This week I interviewed him to learn more about how he took this idea and turned it into a subject now appearing on FreeRice.
How did you first get involved with FreeRice and creating the global hunger section?
I think the concept of FreeRice – learning and helping – is brilliant. As a retired professor of teacher education, [I thought] the concept was very appealing and I wanted to be involved. While contributing to a new FreeRice subject, History, it occurred to me that an important piece of FreeRice's "curriculum" was missing. The existing subject area list offered players a standard selection of academic subjects, yet visiting the World Food Programme site opened one's eyes to much new information about the organization's focal issue, world hunger. Why not offer that as a FreeRice subject? A World Hunger subject would allow the player to not only contribute to reducing world hunger by correctly answering questions, but also to learn about this supremely important issue.
Perhaps a little new knowledge would lead to a desire for more, to exploring the World Food Programme website, and even to discovering new ways to contribute to solving the problem. Fun, learning, commitment, engagement – that's the sequence that I thought a World Hunger subject area on FreeRice might lead to.
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