EchoDitto - World Food Programme

Sticky Rice - posted by Anne Keenan

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:56:42 -0700

So this is my first week at EchoDitto, and one of the most important things you should know about me is that I love rice pudding. And I’m not picky. Kozy Shack? Yes. Kheer? Yes. Homemade? Yes. The kind at the bodega with a half cherry on top? Absolutely.

Which is why the email from my friend Phillip with the subject “Rice Pudding” probably caught my eye. And the URL was www.freerice.com. Free rice pudding? Sign me up.

Well… I don’t want to ruin it for all of you, but it’s not free rice pudding. Instead, it’s a vocabulary game that donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program for every word that you get right. Amazing. (My nerdy love of word games took the edge off my rice-puddingless-disappointment.)

And now I can’t stop. The trick is that for every three words you get right, you go up a level. For every word you get wrong, you go back a level. There are 50 levels. I’m hovering around 43, and the FAQs say it’s nearly impossible to get above 48, but that won’t stop me from trying. And it’s not just my competitive spirit—how do you stop when you know the answer? And how do you stop when you don’t? Won’t it bug me all day if I don’t know what “bole” means?

I think what’s genius about this site is the way the game gets you stuck to the cause. For all of the time I’m thinking about arcane vocabulary words, I’m also thinking about how to address world hunger. So, maybe less delicious than rice pudding, but more satisfying? Satiating? Gratifying? Pleasurable…?

I'm in widget awe - posted by Justin Miller

Thu, 05 May 2005 09:54:43 -0700

Moof! Apple has released Tiger and all is right with the Mac-loving world. Yeah, I still have to upgrade most of EchoDitto's computers, but at least some of us are living the future. New features abound, from Spotlight desktop searching to Automator to help you do repetitive tasks (as the literature says, "it's like your own personal robot inside of your computer!" -- could we please get a little more meta?).

Just as the Dock was the showroom floor demo to get customers oohing and aahing when Mac OS X came out a few years ago, this time around the Dashboard is where the eye candy is at. With the flick of a keystroke or mouse, a dashboard of widgets swoops into view and gives you instant access to whatever information your heart desires (or developers create). The nice thing about widgets is that they are about as simple to create as web pages, so the bar is lowered for techie-minded folks to get in on the action and start making applications.

On my dashboard I've got a clock for both DC and Amsterdam, my computer's uptime, the weather at the office and home (see my previous blogs for why those might differ more than most of my co-workers'), a quick Flickr uploader, a calculator, some sticky notes, and a framed picture of my fiancée (awwwwww) along with a countdown clock to the next major date I need to not forget about. Pretty useful, all in all.

These widgets are so easy to write, I figured I'd take a crack and see what I could come up with. In hardly any time, I was able to put together some HTML, CSS, PNG images, and Javascript and create an automatically-refeshing view of Michael's favorite map. Our Fight Hunger: Walk the World site was recently launched for the United Nations World Food Programme and the map has been a popular destination for people who want to see just where the next event will be organized.

So, if you're running Tiger and you'd like to see this map on your dashboard, feel free to download it and let me know what you think. I'll be tweaking it as time goes on and I'm open to suggestions.

EchoDitto's Walk the World widget

Now, get to the site and make a walk of your own!

Travelblogging - posted by Carey-Leah Havrilko

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:21:24 -0800

Seems to be a theme with us recently.

Being able to travel to Rome last month to work with the World Food Programme was very interesting for me. We all know that the internet is a global tool, but I don’t think that fact is one we consciously think about every day. I was fascinated to hear perspectives on the internet from around the world – this thing that basically "works the same" all over the world, and also links the entire world, means very different things in other countries. It really hit home to me though, just how easily the internet links Europe with the US, for example, while being overseas, yet still being able to instant message or email co-workers in DC in exactly the same manner as if I were in the same building or just across town. Of course I "knew" that was the case, and have corresponded with people in Germany via email and Iceland via IM and so forth, but it was an excellent illustration for me. I can barely imagine conducting business without these tools. It’s also been inspiring to see the growth of and imagine the potential for global giving and activism, such as after the tsunami.

Naturally, where using the internet internationally seems the most seamless is where the money is – Google and advertising. Google is my default home page in Safari, and when I was connected in Rome, I was automatically directed to Italian Google. I could visit my usual web reads, follow my normal routine, but the banner ads would be in Italian, for Italian products. It made me feel at home and very cosmopolitan all at the same time.

Still, nothing beats physically being in a place, especially Italy, and the trip was a nice reminder of that as well.

World Food Disorientation - posted by Michael Silberman

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:07:55 -0800

The neon sign and manufactured aroma emanating from the Cinnabon into Dulles' main airport terminal was one of the last images of the American food culture that stayed with me as I boarded Lufthansa flight 9253 flight for Rome last Monday night.

Carey, Jim, Nicco, and I spent the better half of last week working with a team at the U.N. World Food Programme's (WFP) headquarters in (ironically) the unofficial food capital of the world. Not surprisingly, I've had the opportunity to think about food at almost every step—where it comes from, where it goes, and what we're doing with it once/if we get it.

The problem, to put it simply, is that one in seven of us in the world are not receiving the food we need to survive—even though we (the world) currently produce enough food to feed everyone. The WFP's mission, as the world's largest humanitarian aid organization, is to help solve the food distribution problem and move societies to the point where they no longer need external assistance.

Accordingly, the WFP is made up of truck-drivers, pilots, nutritionists, and logistics people who figure out how to get food and supplies to 90 million hungry, poor people around the world. With operations in more than 80 countries, the WFP is a bit like the UPS and FedEx for the rest of the world, except they operate in places without roads and tarmacs. The WFP's massive logistics network is designed to provide food relief to victims of natural disasters (like the recent tsunami) or political conflict/instability (Darfur) in addition to implementing programs that address hunger at its roots (i.e. their school feeding program).

The irony of doing this hunger-related work in Rome is that we were regularly confronted with some of the best food (and coffee and wine!) in the world. We spent half of our mealtimes feeling guilty about eating so well while millions of others are starving. On the other hand, it seemed completely appropriate for us to be doing this work in a culture that has such a strong appreciation and respect for food and its important role. We were hard-pressed to find any evidence of corporate food production/distribution, like Cinnabon, in Italy, except for one awkwardly placed McDonald's across from the Pantheon.

It quickly became clear to me that our efforts to industrialize the agricultural and meat processing systems here in the U.S. has come at a significant cost. We may have some of the highest crop yields and food surpluses in the world thanks to these advances, but we have sacrificed quality and our ability to appreciate food.

For most of us in the US., food is little more than a necessary means to an end—more fuel so that we can keep working. We get our coffee in cups to go; we eat lunch at our desks or between classes; and only a small percentage of families still have dinner together, around the same table. And only our country's poorest families (of which there are plenty) think twice about food waste. When I looked around the WFP cafeteria, which feeds a mix of 1,000 HQ staff from around the world, I noticed that almost everyone had finished what was on their plate.

In Italy (and much of Europe), the societal importance of food is reflected in its quality—fresh, local, and largely unadulterated. Italians stop what they're doing to have their coffee or food. You don't feel sick or full from the preservatives and countless chemicals, because your food there isn't "processed" in a factory before it's cooked. And if you don't know what pieces of land your meal came from, you probably know the name of the butcher or baker who sold it to you. In Europe, food is something to be enjoyed. Food brings family or friends together for countless hours, or community members in a coffee bar. For more on this, check out the international Slow Food Movement, rooted in Italy.

So, all of this is to say that across our cultures, it's incredible that we still have such vastly different understandings of and appreciations for one of the few things that is truly fundamental to our species' survival. And it's refreshing to be working with an organization that has the operational and logistical capacity to take the lead in the movement to end world hunger.

From the front lines of tsunami relief - posted by Michael Silberman

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 18:19:26 -0700

Our friend Tim Connolly writes this detailed dispatch from from Meulaboh, Indonesia (a town along the western border of the Aceh Province), where he's been serving as the civil-military advisor to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) since 5 January, first in Jakarta, then Medan, then Banda Aceh – the epicenter of the earthquake/tsunami.

The techies from a French non-governmental organization (NGO) called “Telecoms Sans Frontieres” (Telecommunications Without Borders, or TSF) are here proving the Internet connectivity for the humanitarian responders. Data is moved via a very, very slow satellite connection, and they have set up a wireless “hot spot” so that organizations can sit here – usually on a random bag of rice – and connect. These folks do great work, and all the organizations do a really good job of coordinating their access, so that no one ends up hogging the limited bandwidth.

In the spirit of that arrangement, I will forgo the usual travelogue approach (“first I saw this, then I did that”), and give you instead some quick observations I have made over the almost two weeks I have been on the ground here. Once more robust communications are in place – and assuming there is interest – I would be glad to give you a more complete picture, or to answer any questions folks might have.

…Medan airport, waiting for a flight to Banda Aceh. Indonesian television is running a video montage of footage from across the country, over the song “Dust in the Wind,” by the 1970’s rock group Kansas: thundering waves of black water, carrying houses, cars, people in the debris…small child crying, while looking down at the body of what I suspect was her mother…construction backhoes lifting mounds of what at first glance appear to be plastic bags of trash, but are in fact the remains of the dead…humanitarian workers handing out bags of food off the back of a truck…

…Driving from the airport in Banda Aceh to the WFP food warehouse, and having to divert to a side street because of a mass grave site, at which truck after truck pulls up, dumps its cargo into the huge hole in the ground and pulls away, while bulldozers stand ready to cover each load with a fresh layer of dirt…

…Medan airport again, a young boy of 8 or 9, sitting on his father’s lap, his mother beside them. Japanese media, who take his picture and interviews the father, surrounds him. When the flight is finally ready to board, the father – looking both proud and sad at the same time -- gently picks up his son and carries him to the flight. A few short weeks ago, the boy would have run out on the tarmac himself. But this night, he father must carry him, since he no longer has any legs below the knee. He is on his way to Japan for medical treatment (hence the Japanese press)…

…Flying “Susi Air” to Meulaboh. Susi & her husband Henry started a cargo charter service that ships seafood from remote fishing villages to the larger cities, thereby opening those markets to the fishermen who might otherwise have no where to sell their fish. After the tsunami, they donated their aircraft to the relief effort. The pilot of the single engine Cessna I flew in was known only as “Mike.” Mike is a 747 pilot for Continental Airlines, based in Newark (although he actually lives in Guam, but that’s a story for a day with more bandwidth). After hearing about the need for pilots here, he took vacation, arrived at Susi’s doorstep, and offered to fly. Before each flight, he goes out and buys copies of the local newspapers to give to the soldiers who work at the airfield in Meulaboh, and a box of donuts for his passengers…

…Picking up my backpack and heading for Mike’s plane, and only then realizing that the “crates” I and my fellow passengers had been sitting on for the last three hours were, in fact, hastily built coffins.

…Driving down the main road in Banda Aceh and watching life go on, in spite of the devastation that surrounds it. Children playing in the streets, vegetable markets opening one after another, folks sitting in makeshaft “cafes,” drinking tea.

… Hearing a description of how the sea suddenly “disappeared”, exposing hundreds of meters of beach. Since most of those living along the coast make their livelihood through fishing, the sight of thousands of fish flapping around on the newly exposed beach was too much. Untold numbers grabbed their fishing nets and ran down there, hoping to capture the fish before the sea returned to “normal.” It never did. Instead, a wall of water – described by eyewitnesses as being “as high as the tallest palm tree” – rushed in from the sea, and swept homes, cars, people inland.

Tim added this closing note to his friends from the Dean movement:

That’s pretty much it for now. On one of my few opportunities to connect, I read that the Dean community has already managed to crash more than one humanitarian organization’s server in its efforts to make an online contribution. As one who sees the results of those efforts, I just want to tell you that you are making a difference, in ways large and small.

Take care, and may you always go forth and do good.

Tim was the IA Field Director on Howard Dean's presidential campaign and now lives in Madison, Wisconsin.