In October of last year, an online vocabulary game was launched that has since paid for over 21 billion grains of rice, enough to feed over 1 million hungry people for a day. The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program. Anywhere from 300,000 to half a million people play the award-winning Free Rice … every day.

The site aims to provide English vocabulary for free and help eradicate world hunger by providing free rice (made possible by the site’s advertisers). Players donate 20 grains of rice each time they get a right answer; and now, the site has an audio function which allows players to hear how words are pronounced.

The United Nations World Food Program says that consignments have already gone to schoolchildren in Uganda and pregnant and nursing women in Cambodia; future recipients include Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.

So, why not try it and help the cause.

Given the United Nations General Assembly has designated 2008 as the International Year of Languages, wouldn’t it be incredible if the Free Rice concept could be adapted to accommodate other languages in addition to English?

What do you think?