Some months ago Michael posted a short note about donating rice through an internet game: get the meaning of an English word right and you’ve donated 20 grains of rice to the UN's World Food Program. Keep playing and you can actually fill a bowl in a few minutes.
Here’s another way to help others while doing something you already do everyday: search the Web. A number of search engines commit to donate some percentage of their ad revenue (often as high as 50%) to charity --same principle as the WFP’s word game--, only in this case you’re not even setting aside a few minutes to play, but just doing what you normally do. Also, you can choose which charity you want to help.
Of course, the moment the system offers more choices is the moment when you have to spend a bit of time doing some initial homework: which search engines support the charities I’d be interested in? Some of them allow you to enter *any* charity or school, but only in a particular country (Goodsearch.com in the U.S., Everyclick.com in the U.K.). Others are a bit more internationally-focused, like France’s VeoSearch. At any rate, you can donate to charities in those countries that support projects and initiatives in many East Asian countries. You just have to –you guessed it—search around for a little while. Good deal, if you ask me.
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