You may have already discovered FreeRice.com—the addictive online game that donates 20 grains of rice to the World Food Programme for every word you define correctly. In May, a similar site for children—OneHen.org— was launched. Visitors to OneHen win beads while playing the four games on the Web site. Players can then donate the beads, and by doing so help make a daily $100 loan to an African entrepreneur. (The beads have no specific value; even if only one child has donated one bead by bedtime, the entrepreneur gets the loan.) OneHen raises the funds and microlender Opportunity International processes the loans. The site goes a step further than FreeRice, though, letting budding philanthropists read regular updates on how the loans are improving the entrepreneurs’ lives. The message is that starting small leads to big change, says Katie Smith Milway, the site’s cofounder and a partner at the Bridgespan Group—and that might inspire visitors to follow their own entrepreneurial dreams, or continue their giving. Kids go in well primed, adds Milway. “Microentrepreneurship is something any child who has run a lemonade stand can understand.”
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