I am excited about New Year’s Eve this year. It will be the first time in many years that my family will be together to celebrate bringing in the New Year. We plan on watching the ball fall in New York City on TV.

We planned to eat ribs and kraut. In the North, the tradition is eating sauerkraut on New Year’s Eve. In the South, the tradition is eating collard greens and black eyed peas. These traditions are for bringing prosperity and good luck.

A friend told me about a program called FreeRice donating rice through the United Nations to help World Hunger. No one should have to be hungry in this world. Unfortunately, many of us are not able to donate a lot of money. However, we all can help by playing a word game, which increases your word knowledge, to donate 20 grains of rice for each word you get right. You can see the totals so far since October 2007. The United States has not reached its goal yet. For every $100 pledged by United States, 17 cents is pledged. The United States is the second lowest in pledges compared to 21 other countries. The International Aid stated:

Only six countries have not yet set up a schedule to give 0.7%. These are Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States. To raise the $195 billion a year, these six will need to reach the goal.

These six countries are all democracies. All that is necessary for them to reach the 0.7% goal is for enough of their citizens to show their support.

Sources: UN Millennium Project, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), The End of Poverty (Jeffrey D. Sachs), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Let’s help others in need of food by playing this word game. Playing this game few minutes everyday can make a big difference in someone’s life. Sending a simple printable letter to President George W. Bush to honor the agreement made and signed in 2002 at the Monterrey Conference and the Johannesburg Summit to make concrete efforts towards giving 0.7% of our national income in aid to poor countries. Thank you everyone for participating!

May we all have a healthy and prosperous New Year.