Richmond students fight hunger with Internet, rice

Three University of Richmond students have developed a search engine that seeks to end world hunger, one Hoongle search at a time.

Last fall, seniors Vladimir Hruda, David Whitehead and Salmaan Ayaz created Hoongle.org, a search engine that is powered by Google. Hoongle produces the same results as a Google search, but each search donated the monetary equivalent of 20 grains of rice for starving children around the world.

Because Google makes money through agreements with advertisers based on the promise of high Web site traffic, it made an agreement with Hoongle to share a small portion of its revenue, per search, for the extra traffic Hoongle brings to the Google site.

The search engine works through the U.N. World Food Program's "Fill the Cup" campaign, which provides schoolchildren in developing countries with porridge, rice and beans throughout the day, as well as an extra ration for girls to bring home each month. The meals reach approximately 20 million hungry children and are an incentive for impoverished families to send their children to school. The extra ration for girls is an effort to lessen the gap between enrollment of boys and girls in schools.

"We're feeding future leaders, not just with food but with knowledge and inspiration," Whitehead said.

Every six seconds, one child dies from malnutrition and related causes, according to the U.N. World Food Web site. Hoongle has generated more than 7 million grains of rice so far, and has donated the equivalent of about 3,000 meals to Fill the Cup, the creators said.

Making the switch to Hoongle is easy. Users can set Hoongle as their homepage and search from there, or if they have Internet Explorer 7 on a PC or Mozilla Firefox on a PC or Mac, they could download a search box to stay at the top of their window.

"It takes about 15 seconds to put the box on your computer and you never have to think about it again," Hruda said. "Now you're actually saving children's lives by making that little change."

The creators' passion for this project comes through in the way they speak about the site.

"The best way to make sure you love what you do is to do what you love," Ayaz said.

Whitehead said he had been working on Hoongle four to six hours a day. He majors in business administration with concentrations in economics and finance, Hruda majors in mathematical economics and Ayaz majors in economics.

Their workloads are not light, but some of their best brainstorming sessions have happened when they took study breaks in 8:15 or grabbed a meal together at the Heilman Dining Center, they said. They often sat down with their trays and began discussing ideas, then looked down hours later and realized they had not touched their food.

Hoongle started when Hruda interned in Guatemala during the summer of 2008. Jonathan B. Wight, an international studies and economics professor, helped Hruda shape Hoongle by spending several weeks discussing how to create ventures that would help social needs. Wight also set up Hrunda with a non-profit internship at the Highlands Support Project, which served as a catalyst for the Hoongle idea.

Hrunda said he had seen a lot of injustice and suffering in the developing world, and had wondered how he could use the Internet to help less fortunate people. He then discovered Google's custom search tool, which allows people to propose their own search engine based on Google's logarithm. It took about a month to apply, via e-mail, and launch the Hoongle site on Sept.14, 2008, he said.

During the fall Hoongle had about 200 to 300 users, but the server shut down around final exams in late December. They weren't able to find a new server and re-launch the site until late January. People began to rediscover the site, even though Hoongle's only means of advertisement is through social networking programs like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and through word of mouth. Hoongle has a Facebook group and page.

The creators don't spend money on advertising and only 1 to 3 percent of proceeds go toward server maintenance charges. But despite their determination to give as much as possible to the children, their biggest obstacle has been ensuring potential users that Hoongle isn't a hoax and that they're not just pocketing the money Google gives them, they said.

A Collegian story, "Students design program to end world hunger," published in October 2008, helped verify the validity of the site, as did new features on the site such as a blog, FAQ, and How it Works page, which explain the idea and how users can get involved.

Hoongle now has more than 70,000 users in 130 countries, and is growing exponentially. Thirty percent of visits to the site each week are from new users, the creators said. The site is now generating about two million grains per week.

High school students in Ontario, Canada, have created their own Facebook group called Hoongle Clickers, and their goal is to help Hoongle reach 15 million grains of rice by April 23, 2009. They have a Facebook event scheduled for 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, April 10 called Search Hour, during which at least 30 people out of the 393 invited have dedicated themselves to searching on Hoongle for a whole hour.

Hoongle is also featured as the default search engine on The Queen's College at the University of Oxford's Web site. People around the world are mentioning Hoongle in their blogs and on their Twitter statuses. There are blogs about Hoongle in seven different languages, the creators said.

Richmond economics professor Bob Schmidt has informed many of his other students and colleagues about Hoongle.

"They have bigger ideas for Hoongle and are on the lookout for better ideas," he said.

The creators are trying to make the Hoongle site and logo more attractive, and a graphic designer has offered to help at no charge, they said. They're also thinking about launching Hoongle Dark, which is Hoongle with a dark background that would help users with bulky desktop monitors conserve energy, they said. People have also volunteered to create a Hoongle iPhone application and mobile homepage so that users can access Hoongle on-the-go.

Most of the site renovations are based on users' feedback. There is a feedback forum linked to the site for that purpose, on which readers can also vote to support posted suggestions. The Hoongle team is considering developing Hoongle T-shirts and other memorabilia because Richmond students said they would buy Hoongle T-shirts, they said.

They are also working with Gehrung Associates, a national media consultancy, to get national media visibility, they said. According to the CIA World Factbook, there were 223 million Internet users in the United States in 2008.

The Hoongle creators' first major goal is to attract 200,000 users worldwide, and then reconsider their server's capabilities from there. They would like to eventually offer Hoongle in different languages, and incorporate the technology that makes the page change according to a user's location, they said.

Hruda said Hoongle had been his eighth attempt at an entrepreneurial initiative, starting with a textbook exchange site that went bust. But he said his past disappointments had been worth it seeing the way Hoongle has taken off.

Ayaz spoke about the impact the Web site has had on his life.

"This is like a perfect end to our University of Richmond experience," Ayaz said. "When we came here four years ago I would have never even thought that we could create something like this."

Contact staff writer Avril Lighty at avril.lighty@richmond.edu