Parents
Walking
Alongside.
A pioneering SBC initiative co-designed with parents, teachers, and communities across Pakistan. Using WhatsApp, vision boards, and peer-to-peer learning to transform parental engagement from a mandatory obligation into a sustained, meaningful practice.
SBC Design, Research & Full Programme Architecture
White Rice partnered with UNICEF Pakistan to design, co-create, and deliver Walidain HumQadam, Pakistan’s first remotely-delivered SBC programme targeting parental engagement in education. Our role spanned the full programme lifecycle: formative research and co-creation workshops across four provinces, intervention design using the Behavioural Driver Model and Theory of Change, content production for five integrated touchpoints, and a 6.4-million-reach digital campaign.
Key Outcomes
10-year-olds
can’t read.
The Challenge
Parental engagement in Pakistan's public school system is structurally limited at every tier. Economic pressure means parents prioritise immediate survival over school activities. Low literacy, particularly among mothers, creates deep insecurity about their ability to contribute to their child's education. Teachers managing classrooms of 50+ students have minimal capacity to build parent relationships. And communication between schools and families remains almost entirely paper-based.
Fathers are largely absent from the educational lives of their children, viewing it as the mother's responsibility. Mothers, despite their proximity to children, often lack the confidence, literacy, or mobility to advocate effectively at the school level.
Underlying all of this is a belief, reinforced by real economic reality, that formal education may not reliably lead to better outcomes. Before any behaviour change programme could work, it needed to address this foundational question of value. Walidain HumQadam began not by telling parents what to do, but by helping them remember why they hoped.
Parents consider education a fruitless effort — there are examples in every home where someone who completed their MA or BS is unemployed, so they pay more attention to a shop or other work.
The Strategy
The programme's SBC strategy was built around the Socio-Ecological Model, addressing parental disengagement at the individual, interpersonal, community, and institutional levels simultaneously. The Behavioural Driver Model framed the design across three intersecting forces: psychology (internal beliefs and self-efficacy), sociology (social norms, peer influence), and environment (tools, platforms, and access).
Four provinces. Four workshops.
One programme shaped entirely by the communities it would serve.
The original challenge, “how might we improve parental engagement at home and school?”, was transformed through co-creation into something more meaningful. Not a question about compliance, but about shared ambition. This reframing became the north star for every intervention design decision that followed.
Every touchpoint designed to build on the last.
Parents and teachers who changed their minds, and then changed their habits.
From 500 parents to 14 million impressions.
The Impact
Walidain HumQadam was the first programme of its kind in Pakistan: a remotely-delivered, WhatsApp-native SBC intervention designed to shift parental engagement in education at scale. The results demonstrated both the viability of the model and its readiness for national rollout.
Walidain HumQadam proved that parental engagement in education is not an infrastructure problem. It’s a behaviour change problem. One that starts with aspiration, is sustained through habit, and scales through technology. Pakistan now has a tested blueprint. What it needs next is the national commitment to use it.
Parents who remember
why they hoped
show up differently.
Walidain HumQadam proved that parental engagement in education is not an infrastructure problem. It’s a behaviour change problem. One that starts with aspiration, is sustained through habit, and scales through technology. Pakistan now has a tested blueprint. What it needs next is the national commitment to use it.
