White Rice20
Celebrating Twenty Years of Changing Behaviour
Could storytelling, design, and behavioural science drive real social change?
In 2006, a small team in Islamabad set out to answer that question. What started as an experiment in gamified learning and animated films grew into a movement, reaching millions of people across Pakistan and beyond. This is the story of that journey, told in five chapters.
A communications agency built to create change
White Rice Founded
White Rice launched in Islamabad with a single conviction: that design, storytelling, and behavioural science could shift how people think, feel, and act at scale.
BHAID, Life Skills for Teens
Pakistan's first gamified interactive multimedia program and comic book for teenagers on life skills, distributed to over 100 schools nationwide.
BHAID, Comic Book Series
Alongside the digital program, a print comic book series brought BHAID's life-skills curriculum to classrooms without computer access, ensuring no school was left behind.
Gold Award, Chinh India Kids Film Festival
Abdullah's Story
An award-winning animated short film addressing stigma around visual impairment and disabilities. Voted by children themselves at the Chinh India Kids Film Festival, one of Pakistan's earliest examples of film as a behaviour change tool.
Abdullah's Story, Production
Pakistan's first online philanthropy portal Give2Pakistan.org also launched this year, connecting donors with vetted NGOs through digital storytelling and building a culture of online giving.
Oxfam Livelihoods Project
White Rice's first international NGO collaboration, a documentary and communication series showcasing vulnerable communities confronting climate change and building livelihoods.
Aflatoun, E-Learning for Street Kids
An award-winning animated e-learning series for street children and teenagers in detention centres, teaching life and financial skills through engaging storytelling.
Aflatoun, Classroom Sessions
Aflatoun's classroom deployment proved Pakistani creative talent could operate at a global standard, the series would later win the PASHA ICT Award for best e-learning application.
Top 100
Asia's Top 100 Entrepreneurs Under 30
White Rice CEO Raheel Waqar was selected by FYSE Paragon as one of Asia's top 100 entrepreneurs under 30, placing White Rice on the regional map as a social innovation leader.
Food Security Campaign (Oxfam)
A two-year Oxfam campaign supporting farmers' livelihoods and community collaboration on food security, combining field research, visual storytelling, and community mobilisation.
Life Skills Storybook for Girls
A life skills storybook for girls distributed to schools across Punjab to counter the disruption caused by recent floods, reaching over 400 schools with critical learning materials.
$1,000,000 Raised for Girls' Rights
16 Days of Activism
A nationwide campaign on girls' rights and violence against women and girls for Oxfam, which grew into a multi-year movement raising over $1 million for Oxfam's four-year programme.
Dunya Aur Larki, The Girl vs World
A campaign that led directly to Pakistan's first children's assembly on girls' access to education, amplifying young voices in national policy conversations.
Disaster Education Toolkit (AJK)
Interactive educational materials deployed to over 400 schools in Azad Jammu & Kashmir, building resilience in communities most vulnerable to natural disasters.
600,000
We Can, Pakistan's Largest VAWG Campaign
A movement united against violence against women and girls, one of Pakistan's largest citizen-driven advocacy campaigns, powered by community storytelling and grassroots mobilisation.
HIV Prevention Strategy
A behaviour change communication strategy for injecting drug users, combining empathy-led design with evidence-based messaging to reduce transmission and reduce stigma.
HIV Prevention, Community Outreach
Field-level community outreach materials extended the HIV prevention strategy into communities, bridging clinical guidance with grassroots communication.
Sightsavers, Most Innovative Campaign
A five-year awareness and advocacy campaign for the visually impaired and diabetic persons, recognised by Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia as the most innovative communication campaign of the year.
Pakistan's Largest Education Transformation
Alif Ailaan
A five-year campaign that directly engaged 12,000+ politicians and decision-makers on education reform, and helped bring 100,000 out-of-school children back into classrooms.
Awaaz, Citizen Accountability (DFID)
A five-year DFID-funded programme on inclusiveness and citizen accountability, reaching 10 million citizens across 4,500 villages and transforming how communities engage with governance.
HIV/AIDS Behaviour Change, Transgender Community
An animation series for transgender communities on HIV prevention, marking White Rice's first integration of Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design into practice.
HIV/AIDS, Animation Series
The animation series delivered sensitive health messages with empathy and cultural nuance, reaching communities where traditional outreach had previously failed.
Aflatoun Wins PASHA ICT Award
The Aflatoun e-learning series received the PASHA ICT Award for best e-learning application, validating White Rice's model of education through storytelling, five years after its creation.
Everyone Campaign (Save the Children)
A national media campaign for Save the Children focused on infant mortality and newborn deaths, using emotional storytelling to shift public attention toward Pakistan's most vulnerable children.
Awaaz I-Reporter Series
A TV series training community members to document and report on the issues affecting their own lives, building a culture of active citizenship through participatory journalism.
Business Leadership Excellence
Australian High Commission Award
International recognition for White Rice's contribution to social impact through design. The world started paying attention to what was happening in a studio in Islamabad.
USIP Peace Toolkit
Action research engaging children and mothers on social conflict dynamics, producing a peace-building toolkit grounded in community voices and Human-Centered Design methodology.
27,000+ Health Workers Trained
Polio Frontline Workers Campaign
An animation series and training videos for frontline health workers addressing community resistance to polio vaccination, behavioural science applied to one of Pakistan's most critical public health challenges.
Polio Campaign, Field Training
Field-level training workshops equipped frontline workers with the communication tools to engage resistant communities, combining print, animation, and in-person facilitation.
Polio Campaign, Community Engagement
Context-specific messaging addressed the unique concerns of each community, WaterAid's five-year WASH strategy also launched this year, laying the foundation for Clean & Green Pakistan.
IKEA Foundation / Oxfam HCD Project
Pakistan's first extensive Human-Centered Design-enabled impact project, design consulting for young farmers and entrepreneurs, reaching 10,000 youth across rural communities.
Nike Foundation · 1,000,000 Girls Reached
The Girl Effect Mobile
In partnership with Nike Foundation's Girl Effect, over 100 life-skills stories delivered through mobile, accessed by more than 1 million girls across Pakistan. Storytelling as empowerment.
UNICEF Child Stunting Programme
A two-year behaviour change programme in Sindh targeting child stunting, reaching 100,000 mothers with evidence-based nutrition and caregiving messaging through community storytelling.
11,000 Mothers' Voices
World's Largest Storytelling Exercise
White Rice conducted the world's largest storytelling exercise with mothers, 11,000 voices shaping a national maternal health campaign from the ground up. Community as the author.
USAID SPRING Accelerator
A four-country Human-Centered Design research programme for adolescent girls' nutrition products, White Rice's first multi-country HCD engagement spanning Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
UNICEF, Empowering the Last Mile
Animated and interactive content built for over 250,000 frontline health workers globally, boosting their confidence and competence to address vaccine hesitancy in hard-to-reach communities.
Punjab's Largest WASH Campaign · 30M+ Reached
Clean & Green Punjab
The largest WASH behaviour change initiative in Pakistan's history, five target behaviours, 36 districts, 2 million people reached directly, and over 30 million on digital media.
Bharosa Karain (ICRC)
A behaviour change campaign for ICRC reducing violence against healthcare staff, part of ICRC's global initiative 'A Matter of Life and Death', protecting medical personnel in conflict zones.
Inclusive Hiring Design Sprint
A design sprint reimagining private sector hiring practices, followed by a Grassroots Innovators programme connecting local entrepreneurs with new economic opportunities.
50M+
COVID-19 National Response
When the pandemic struck, White Rice mobilised immediately, delivering life-saving behaviour change campaigns on safety, WASH, health, and nutrition across Pakistan.
Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme
Supporting the government's largest emergency cash distribution using digital platforms, communication design that helped 10.7 million families access critical financial support during the crisis.
FAO, Dietary Habits, Balochistan
A ground-breaking behaviour change initiative by FAO aimed to change dietary habits and increase food diversity for families in Balochistan, addressing hidden hunger through culturally resonant storytelling.
UNDP, Glacier Lake Outburst Floods
A behaviour-driven prevention and protection campaign for UNDP in Northern Pakistan, helping communities understand and respond to the growing threat of glacial lake outburst floods.
Pakistan's First VR Film Series
A pioneering VR film series highlighting water and sanitation challenges across Pakistan, combining immersive storytelling with AI-driven impact to open a new frontier in behaviour change.
Early Childhood Development
UNICEF Sindh Community PlayLabs
UNICEF-backed community play spaces promoting early childhood development and parenting engagement across Sindh. Behaviour change through play.
PlayLabs in Action
Community sessions where mothers and children learn together through structured play, building cognitive and social skills from the earliest years.
Parental Engagement for ECD
A UNICEF behaviourally designed parenting programme strengthening child stimulation and responsive caregiving. Shifting how families interact with their children.
ITC Nationwide Initiative
National Food Safety Campaign
A nationwide campaign helping food vendors adopt safer hygiene practices through visual nudges. Behavioural science applied to everyday commerce.
World Bank Child Stimulation Programme
A large-scale initiative improving early childhood stimulation through caregiver engagement. Behaviour change at the systems level.
Storytelling as Systems Change
Films for Change
A new storytelling platform using films and documentaries to drive behaviour change across climate, health, and gender. Twenty years of learning, distilled into moving images.
20
years of changing behaviour
From a studio in Islamabad to a force for social impact across continents. The journey continues.
The Next Decade of
Behaviour Change
Twenty years of evidence have taught us one thing: behaviour change at scale is possible when you combine science with storytelling. The next chapter is about taking that further. AI-powered nudge systems, immersive experiences, real-time behavioural data, and community-driven design will define how we create impact.
From health and education to climate action and financial inclusion, the challenges are bigger than ever. But so is our ability to meet them. The journey continues.
Looking for a behaviour change partner?
We work with UN agencies, governments, and donors to design behaviour change programmes that reach the last mile.