FreePoverty donates drinking water based on your geography knowledge
January 13, 2010
BY BILL FERRIS
Do you enjoy playing video games, learning geography, and helping those less fortunate, not necessarily in that order? The online game FreePoverty rewards your knowledge of geography by donating 10 cups of water to thirsty people around the world for every city or landmark you can correctly place on a world map.
Similar to FreeRice, FreePoverty lets you have fun and help others at the same time. But when you define vocabulary words in FreeRice, you’re either right or you’re wrong. FreePoverty has a good deal of wiggle room:
“If your answer is correct, 10 cups of water will be donated. The further away you are from the location, the number of cups will decrease.
So if you’re at least halfway close to a location, you’ll earn at least some water. I may not know where Mt. Fuji is exactly, but I do know it’s in Japan, which is a pretty small country. As long as I click somewhere in Japan, I know that someone, somewhere can wet their whistle with at least seven or eight cups of water.
However, if you’re supposed to fine Rome, and you point to Iran, you earn no water, and you lose a life. Lose five lives, the game is over, and FreePoverty actually goes into a village and confiscates a bucket of H2O. Okay, not really. You merely feel the guilt that comes with knowing, had you only paid more attention in Geography class, impoverished people wouldn’t die of thirst. Fortunately, you can assuage that guilt by playing FreePoverty again and again. This is one video game you won’t mind getting hooked on.
