It sounds like spam or a cheap joke.  As if you spending time clicking and surfing the web can do any good to people who are starving to death!  Wouldn’t world hunger have ended by now then?  I was really skeptical when I first started looking into these sites…I mean, who wouldn’t be?  It just sounds too good to be true. 

According to the United Nations, 25,000 people die every day from hunger related causes, most of them being children.  Together, more than 6.5 million children die every year from a lack of food and clean water.  Only 75 cents a day would feed one child — less than it costs for one cup of coffee would provide three meals a day for one child.  If you could only save one child, would it not be worth it?  Every year $30 billion is raised from ad revenue on internet sites.  A small portion of this could help put an end to world hunger.

There has been a proliferation of sites in the last few years devoted to using the money raised from online advertising to help end world hunger. Here’s a review of some of the more popular sites, how they work, where the money comes from and where the money goes to.  Does this really work?  Why can’t someone just make a program to just keep clicking the “click here” buttons?

FreeRice

This site donates rice (obviously from the name of it!).  It is formatted as a vocabulary building game.  Every correct answer earns 20 grains of rice.  In countries where rice is a dietary staple, it takes 400 grams of rice to feed one person for one day.  Since there are approximately 48 grains of rice per gram, it would take 19,200 grains to feed one person per day.  This means that you would have to get 960 vocabulary answers right to feed one person for one day.

This website is associated with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.  This center “envisions a growing opportunity to use Internet technologies to improve the ways that we teach, learn, and make information accessible to citizens around the world.”  They have helped set up the website itself as well as the vocabulary tests.  They have started branching out into other subjects as well including math, geography, art, and language tests.  These tests are set up to make clicking for free rice challenging and rewarding for the users as well as the receivers of the rice.

This website is also associated with the United Nations World Food Program to help procure and distribute the rice donations.  They have donated rice to Uganda, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia and many other places.

Helpthirst

This site donates water — or actually it donates the money necessary to buy the equivalent amount of water earned.  It is formatted as a number memorizing game.  Every correct answer earns one cup of water.  Memorizing numbers is said to help with short term memory and keeps your brain active.  People are supposed to drink 8 cups of water each day.  This does not include the amount of water necessary for bathing, washing clothes or dishes.  This means you would have to get at least approximately 8 memorization numbers right to provide enough water for one person for one day to drink.

This website is associated with World Vision.  The website gives the equivalent monetary amount to the water users have earned to World Vision.  They, in turn, procure and distribute the water to countries in need.
The website itself does not have a list of countries they have helped supplied water to.  However, World Vision works in many, many countries — nearly 100 different countries in total.  Their website outlines their work in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.

FreePoverty

This site donates water or the equivalent monies to buy the water earned by users.  It is formatted as a geography game.  You can earn between zero and ten cups of water depending on how close your answer is to the location asked.  For example, they’ll ask where Kabul, Afghanistan is.  You’ll have ten seconds to click on your guess on the world map.  The closer you get to the right location, the more water you’ll “earn”.  It goes through an easy, medium and hard level with five chances to get it completely wrong.  If you get the location exactly right, you earn 10 cups of water which would be enough for one person in one day to drink.
This website has recently lost theif affiliation with a distributer and is currently looking for a new one.

Free Flour

This site donates flour (again, pretty obvious I know) or the money necessary to buy the equivalent amount of flour earned by users. It is formatted as a global trivia game.  You earn one spoon of flour per correct answer.  It takes ten spoons of flour to make one bun and 100 spoons of flour to make a loaf of bread.  The level of difficulty adjusts with the game play.

This website is associated with the World Bread Institute which buys and distributes food to the hungry and helps the hungry feed themselves.  The World Bread Institute is involved in both domestic and global food distribution.  They work within the United States on nutrional lunches for children, food stamps and welfare assistance and reform.  They work throughout Africa on food distribution, education and sustainability issues.

Other Sites

There are many, many other sites where you can donate money to hunger issues through clicking.  Several of these such as hungerfighters.com, oneclickonemeal.com and childrecare2.com are one click a day sites.  They are set up to donate money based on clicks per day instead of being formatted as games where you can earn increasing amounts for play.
There are also sites dedicated to education, health promotion, saving animals, saving the environment, forrests and plants, promoting safety, etc. etc. etc.  The list is seemingly unending and growing daily.

Does this Really Work?

It appears so, yes.  Since $30 billion a year is made on internet revenue from ads and clicking, a small percentage of this could really make a huge difference.  These sites can, through their donations, help the distributors of food and water, save lives.  The amount of people using these sites (i.e. clicking) can generate the revenue necessary for these sites to pass on.  I would be careful however and make sure to read the FAQ page on the site.  If you really want to help and ensure that your time is doing some good you can donate money to any charity of your choice.  Again, look into where the money goes.  Make sure that most of the money is going straight to help people instead of being tied up in administrative costs.  There are good charities, great charities and mediocre ones.  You can also volunteer to spend your time and money locally helping people in your own community.

Can’t I Just Make a Program to Click?

The answer is yes, you could.  However, the sites claim two problems with this.  First, it would overload their servers so that real people could not click and play (and learn in some cases).  This would discourage people from revisiting these sites.  Secondly, without real people playing and resulting company sponsorship, no money would be generated and there would be no money to distribute.  The companies would soon notice that their ads were not reaching anyone and would stop advertising.  This would collapse the whole system.

So go ahead and click away!  Maybe you can relieve some of your guilt of surfing on the job or instead of doing housework.