Feeding America

I saw a headline in a local freebie paper today about how our area food banks were running out of food. Already, many one-time food donors are heading to the food bank to accept donations, and more and more people squeezed by bad mortgages and job losses are heading to their doors.

Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest) is a national association of food banks. They're in 200 cities in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, and they're there for thousands of people when the going gets rough. They're also really efficient --more than 97 percent of the money taken in goes toward helping the hungry.

So check out Feeding America's charitable programs and learn more about how food banks help people in your area. Then, click here to donate your $5 for the week. And finally, check out the cupboard in the kitchen for some of that non-perishable food that's been sitting around, and drop it off at your local church or food bank. Heck, buy some extra at the grocery store next time.

We're all in this together, after all.

Play a game online and fight hunger

Forget about Minesweeper -- this is a much better way to waste time at work, and it helps fight hunger at the same time. FreeRice.com is a multiple-choice game that tests your vocabulary. For each right answer you get, the site's corporate sponsors donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme. You may be thinking, "Twenty grains? Big deal." Well, in just five minutes of playing, I donated 500 grains of rice. That's somebody's dinner right there.

FreeRice is a partner site to Poverty.com, which was started by John Breen, an Indiana computer programmer. Since the site started in October 2007, thousands of people have chipped in to learn new words...and feed two million people. This is, needless to say, all kinds of awesome.

So close out the Solitare program and dial up FreeRice.com. It's better for your vocabulary, and you'll be helping to feed the hungry around the world. And if vocab isn't your strong suit, click "Options" on the toolbar on the top of the FreeRice page to play games based on art, foreign languages, math and even chemistry.