189. Rice
I really like this web page: http://www.freerice.com
It is a site, where people can improve their knowledge of several subjects, and thus they bring traffic to the page. The sponsors donate rice to hungry people, 10 grains for every correct answer, at 48 grains per gram. It helped me to learn some English vocabulary, my actual favorite topic there are famous paintings.
More info in this video: http://www.wfp.org/videos/freerice-reaches-bangladesh
The people, who live and starve now, need food, there is no doubt, and I am far from being a cynic about it. But fact is also, that people are lacking food partly because the population of this planet is growing faster than both the production of food and any political development towards more justice and more fairness in the distribution.
In poor countries, people often have a dozen starving children in ill health, doing child labor instead of attending school. If there were only 2 children in a family, their parents may be able to feed them and send them to school.
But this disadvantageous fertility is not only due to cultural traditions, the couples also lack the means and often the knowledge how to avoid pregnancies.
Donating rice alleviates the immediate needs. But seen on a long term basis, donating any means for family planning would be at least as important as food. It is nice to answer 4800 questions correctly and to know, that some people get a kilo of rice. Maybe there should be an alternative of also being able to contribute to the donation of means for family planning. Instead of 10 grains of rice per correct answer, it could be 10 minutes of any method of contraception, 4320 correct answers would make it a month.
Bangladesh as is mentioned in the video is a good example of the urgency of the problem. The country is very low. If the level of the ocean would rise because of the melting of ice on the poles, then considerable parts of the country will disappear under water. Where will the growing population move too?
If giving rice to people encourages them to produce more children, then what is humanitarian in the moment is adding to the catastrophe in the future. Rice should be given with priority to those people, who in return are willing to limit their fertility.
I really like this web page: http://www.freerice.com
It is a site, where people can improve their knowledge of several subjects, and thus they bring traffic to the page. The sponsors donate rice to hungry people, 10 grains for every correct answer, at 48 grains per gram. It helped me to learn some English vocabulary, my actual favorite topic there are famous paintings.
More info in this video: http://www.wfp.org/videos/freerice-reaches-bangladesh
The people, who live and starve now, need food, there is no doubt, and I am far from being a cynic about it. But fact is also, that people are lacking food partly because the population of this planet is growing faster than both the production of food and any political development towards more justice and more fairness in the distribution.
In poor countries, people often have a dozen starving children in ill health, doing child labor instead of attending school. If there were only 2 children in a family, their parents may be able to feed them and send them to school.
But this disadvantageous fertility is not only due to cultural traditions, the couples also lack the means and often the knowledge how to avoid pregnancies.
Donating rice alleviates the immediate needs. But seen on a long term basis, donating any means for family planning would be at least as important as food. It is nice to answer 4800 questions correctly and to know, that some people get a kilo of rice. Maybe there should be an alternative of also being able to contribute to the donation of means for family planning. Instead of 10 grains of rice per correct answer, it could be 10 minutes of any method of contraception, 4320 correct answers would make it a month.
Bangladesh as is mentioned in the video is a good example of the urgency of the problem. The country is very low. If the level of the ocean would rise because of the melting of ice on the poles, then considerable parts of the country will disappear under water. Where will the growing population move too?
If giving rice to people encourages them to produce more children, then what is humanitarian in the moment is adding to the catastrophe in the future. Rice should be given with priority to those people, who in return are willing to limit their fertility.
