Did you know that by finding the correct answers you can feed a hungry child?

More than 500 million Spanish speakers and millions more people learning Spanish worldwide can now improve their vocabulary in a fun and challenging way, and help to feed hungry children around the world, thanks to Freerice Español (freerice.com/es), following its launch today by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Instituto Cervantes, at the Institute’s headquarters in New York.

“Whether you are a Spanish speaker eager to enrich your vocabulary or an avid language student, Freerice engages players in a fun and challenging way that helps the hungry,” said Nancy Roman, WFP Director of Communications and Private Sector Partnerships Division.

How does Freerice work? Players face increasingly difficult vocabulary questions and for every correct answer, they earn ten grains of rice donated through WFP and paid for by advertisers of the site.  Freerice is also an  exciting and innovative social media tool, giving players the ability to create online groups with their relatives, friends and co-workers, taking vocabulary game play and interaction to a new level.

Originally launched in English in 2007, Freerice.com became an instant viral phenomenon. In its first month, the game had raised enough rice to feed over 50,000 people for a day. Its designer, John Breen, says the programme started out as a simple word game to help his teenage sons prepare for their college entrance exams. Today, the English version attracts 40,000 players daily (1.3 million per month) who take the fight against hunger online. They have raised almost 1 billion grains of rice, enough to feed 4.8 million people for a day in countries like Haiti, Uganda and Bangladesh?

The new Spanish version is the first foreign language release of Freerice with other language versions including Chinese, French, Italian and Korean underway.

Over the past 6 years, Spanish speakers have grown by over 600 per cent while the Internet penetration of Spanish speakers outpaced the world average by more than 8 percent.  Spain is in the top 10 countries playing Freerice in English.

“With the growing number of Spanish-speaking people around the world, Freerice Espanol presents a huge opportunity to reach this demographic who can help make a real difference in the fight against hunger,” said Roman.