A new internet phenomenon has sprung up these past two years. Free charity game websites pledge to donate to various causes if the visitor is simply willing to play an online game. The games available include simple word definition questions, geography trivia, number memorization and even crossword puzzle questions. The visitor is able to play for as long as he likes, donating increasing amounts of resources towards the designated charity.
It is now possible for a person to be selective about which site he wishes to spend his time on. Users can now choose from different games to play as well as different kinds of donations.
Which sites are the best? Which ones should you visit? Below is a summary of the current free charity game websites out there.
Freerice.com
Free Rice is the free charity game juggernaut. Since its opening on October 7, 2007, the site has donated over 41 billion grains of rice to needy communities. Free Rice plays a bit like a never ending SAT test. You are given a particular word, and four possible answer words are then listed below. The player must choose the answer that is similar to the listed word. If the player is correct, twenty grains of rice will be donated to the UN World Food Program. The site claims that playing the game may improve your vocabulary. The words used in the game get more difficult as the player answers more questions correctly.
Charitii.com
Charitii.com is an interesting and fun take on the free charity game concept. The game plays like a multiple choice crossword puzzle. The clues are similar to the ones found in crossword puzzles, and the answer is what you would be writing into the boxes. Some of the puzzles are quite creative, often leaving the player with an “A-HA” feeling after realizing the answer. For each correct answer, Charitii.com will donate five ounces of clean drinking water to the charity: water nonprofit organization. This organization will utilize 100% of the funds it receives to give water to communities living in poverty. The game plays quickly, and the water donations easily add up. The website claims over 10,000 puzzles in their custom database, and players are also able to submit new puzzles to the database for others to play. Charitii.com automatically adjusts the game’s difficulty level as the player solves more puzzles.
Freeflour.com
Freeflour.com is a web charity site that looks very much like the Free Rice website. With the same boxy look and general layout, the website hasn’t changed much, but the colors are now brown instead of green. The website presents users with tough multiple choice geography trivia questions. For each correct answer, 1 spoon of flour will be donated on the player’s behalf. The site says that 100 spoons of flour are needed to make a single loaf of bread. Freeflour.com states that it will donate an amount of money that is equivalent to the value of the flour collected on the site to the “Bread for the World Institute.”
Aidtochildren.com
This site also looks quite a lot like the Free Rice website, utilizing the same boxy green style. The game itself is essentially the same as Free Rice as well. You are given a target word and then 4 possible answers. Like Free Rice, you must pick the word that best describes the target word. If you select the correct answer, $0.0025 (a quarter of a penny) will be donated to help buy gifts for children through World Vision, a Canadian relief organization.
Freepoverty.com
Like Freeflour.com, this site also uses geography trivia questions for the visitor to play. The website relies heavily on JavaScript to provide a more interactive experience. The game tells you the name of a geographical landmark or city, and then gives you a limited amount of time to place a marker on a map indicating where you think it is located. Depending on how close you are to the precise location, a different amount of water will be donated. FreePoverty.com currently does not specify anywhere on their website how and where exactly the water is donated, which is cause for concern.
Helpthirst.com
This is another site built to donate water to poor communities. The site layout is clean and simple. The game tells you a number, such as 4295, which you then have about three seconds to memorize. After the time limit, the number is erased, and you must then tell the game what the number was. This site will donate 1 cup of water to World Vision for every correct answer. As you get more answers correct, the length of the number to memorize gets longer. The game concept is different from all the other charity websites, but players may grow bored memorizing increasingly long strings of numbers.
Simple Click Charities
Simple click charity web sites, such as http://www.thehungersite.com, are the original free online charity. They require you to click on a banner to then donate a predetermined amount to charity. There is no game to play. The website visitor must simply click on a banner to open up a page showing numerous advertisements. This type of charity is somewhat limited since the user can only click on the banner once a day. Future clicks that day will not donate to charity, so users are limited in the amount of help they can do. Also, since there is no game to play on these websites, players may quickly lose interest and subsequently will stop visiting.
The number of free charity websites has increased steadily these past couple of years. I hope that this guide has been helpful towards understanding what is currently available on the internet.