The Hunger Site
- — 09 September, 1999 21:49
It sounds unreal, but no, this site is not a hoax. The Hunger Site (http:// www.hungersite.com) promises that with each click of a particular button on its site, a donation is made possible to ease world hunger.
It works like this: corporate sponsors sign up on a daily or weekly basis, to donate half a US cent per each click on The Hunger Site's "Donate Free Food" button. You can click the button once a day, and a thank you message is displayed with links to each sponsor.
At the end of the day or week, the sponsors each sign a cheque for 100 per cent of the "donations" made by Web surfers. The money goes straight to the United Nations World Food Programme, which then sees each half cent translated into a quarter-cup of cooked food such as staples like rice and wheat, and distributed to hungry people in 80 countries.
On an average, six companies sponsor the site each day, which means each donation is equal to one-and-a-half cups of food, all up 30 tonnes weekly, according to The Hunger Site.
The service is made all the more worthwhile when you learn that 24,000 people die of hunger each day, that's one death every 3.6 seconds, according to the site. Since the site launched in June, cash donations equivalent to more than a million food servings have been donated, it says.
