Celebrating 15 years of Impact

The past decade and a half have been filled with both challenges and gifts. White Rice has evolved from a straightforward communications agency to a multi-faceted behavioural design firm. We have grown our team and massified impact from local to global.

Join us on a retrospective of 15x Impact.

Explore Our Journey Book

Success - you have to define it yourself
Khawar S. Ansari Co-founder 1955 - 2020

2006

White riceLaunched

A COMMUNICATION´S AGENCY WITH A FOCUS TO CREATE CHANGE

BHAID was the country’s first gamified interactive multimedia program and comic book to support teens in relating and learning about life skills, distributed to over 100 schools throughout Pakistan.

An animated video and visual book for disaster education outreach, produced for JICA in response to the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, which became a standardized tool used by schools and government bodies for disaster risk reduction training.

2007

We won the gold award! Chinh India Kids Film Festival 2009 Abdullah’s Story was voted by the children themselves.

Give2pakistan.org (PCP) was Pakistan’s first online philanthropy portal for matching corporate with non-profit donations.

Abdullah’s Story was an award-winning animated short film to shift how remote traditional communities viewed people with visual impairment and disabilities.

2008

White Rice starts specialising in gamified learning and interactive content experiences for children and teens.

Oxfam Livelihoods Project was our first international NGO collaboration with OXFAM, showcasing the work of vulnerable communities around climate change.

Aflatoun is an award-winning animated e-learning series to support the education of street kids and teens in juvenile detention centers in learning applicable life and financial skills.

“We have learnt how to get what we need. We now know there is a solution to every problem, we just need to find a way to reach it. If we work with pure intention, the solution might take time but we will solve it together” -Community Beneficiary

2009

White Rice CEO, Raheel Waqar, selected as Asia’s top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by FYSE Paragon

A two-year Food Security Campaign for Oxfam to provide visibility and awareness for local farmers to improve their livelihoods and scale their work by collaborating as a community.

Schools impacted 400+

Designed a life skills storybook for girls that was distributed to schools within Punjab to counter the disruption of schools due to recent floods.

2010

$1,000,000

Raised

For OXFAM’s four-year advocacy and awareness raising campaign, riding on the success of the 16 Days of Activism campaign

White Rice starts helping organisations kickstart movements and communities to raise their voices.

16 Days of Activism was a campaign on girls rights and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) for Oxfam, which became a nationwide movement

Dunya Aur Larki - The Girl vs World resulted in a grassroots advocacy campaign and led to Pakistan’s first children’s assembly around the access to education for girls and a political discourse around the issue.

An interactive toolkit on disaster education and preparation for 400+ schools in the AJK (Azad, Jammu, Kashmir) regions.

2011

We Can - Launched a campaign around countering Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), which became a 600,000 Change Makers movement across Pakistan.

600,000

CHANGEMAKERS INVOLVED

Our first behaviour change strategy to engage injecting drug users in preventing the spread of HIV and other harmful diseases.

A five-year awareness and advocacy campaign for Sightsavers, around the challenges faced by visually impaired and diabetic persons, which won the most innovative communication award in the eye care category by Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia.

2012

White Rice works on Pakistan’s largest Educational and Citizen Reforms.

Alif Ailaan was Pakistan’s largest campaign to transform education that spanned across 5 years and directly engaged over 12,000 politicians and decision makers, while helping kids get enrolled back into school.

100,000

KIDS RE-ENROLLED INTO SCHOOLS

Awaaz Campaign - A 5-year DFID funded programme focusing on inclusiveness and citizen accountability.

10,000,000

CITIZENS IN

4,500

VILLAGES IMPACTED

Aitebaar Women in Police Custody - An empathy-based campaign to alleviate the stigma and support the reintegration of women in police custody into their communities.

2013

Integrated Design Thinking & Human-Centered Design (HCD) methodologies into our work.

Behavior Change Strategy, accompanied with an animation series for to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in the transgender community.

Received the PASHA ICT Award for best e-learning application for Aflatoun, an animated financial and social literacy program.

10,000

TEENAGERS IMPACTED

Relax! Pakistan's first online self-help app for teenagers to manage stress and mental health.

2014

Everyone Campaign for Save the Children was a media campaign showcasing the need for interventions to combat infant mortality & newborn deaths.

Awaaz I-Reporter Series was a TV series encouraging active citizenship by getting citizen to document their issues and share them with key stakeholders

1,200

COMMUNITY TRAINERS SUPPORTED

Safe Home, Safe Society - A Violence-Free Community Toolkit designed for International Alert to assist trainers in delivering key messages to the community, successfully reaching 1,200 community trainers.

2015

Received the Australian High Commission Award for Business Leadership Excellence Award

Communication Pack developed to highlight key policies and their impact on the government for the British Council’s Research Unit

An action research Peace Toolkit designed for USIP, to engage children and mothers to gain insights and create a better understanding of social conflict dynamics.

2016

An animation series and context-specific training videos for Polio frontline workers to better address community resistance and helping them understand the long-term implications of polio.

27,000+

PEOPLE TRAINED

A five-year Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WASH) behaviour change campaign strategy for WaterAid, which became the foundation for the national Clean & Green Pakistan initiative.

Pakistan’s first extensive HCD-enabled impact project reaching

10,000

Youth

Comissioned by IKEA Foundation & Oxfam, the Human-centered Design Consulting assignment was a facilitation process to gain user insights, ideate, and prototype products for young farmers, micro-entrepreneurs, and startups.

2017

Embedded behavioral science and design thinking to focus on creating behavior change.

1,000,000

GIRLS ACCESSED

the content in Pakistan

The Girl Effect Mobile, part of Nike Foundations global movement, involved research and design of 100+ unique life-skills stories for mobile, accessible to millions of girls across the country.

100,000

MOTHERS REACHED

A two-year behavior change program designed and rolled-out for UNICEF to reduce child stunting in Sindh.

2018

World's largest storytelling exercise

11,000

MOTHERS REACHED

White Rice conducts the world’s largest storytelling exercise with mothers.

A 4-country Human-centered Design research project for USAID’s SPRING Accelerator, aimed to work with growing Pakistani startups to improve the design and uptake of products and services for adolescent girls.

Empowering the Last Mile by designing animated and interactive learning content to empower 250,000+ UNICEF global frontline workers on immunisation skills.

2019

Initiated Design Sprints to create impact-centric initiatives.

Clean & Green Punjab - Punjab’s largest Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene (WASH) behavior change initiative for local households

Bharosa Karain - Violence Against Healthcare Staff was a behavior change campaign designed to reduce violence in healthcare settings, as part of ICRC’s global initiative - A matter of life and death

Clean & Green Punjab Campaign reached

2 million

PEOPLE DIRECTLY

30 million

ON DIGITAL MEDIA

Design Sprint initiatives to enable more inclusive hiring practives in the private sector & design a radical Grassroots Innovators program

2020

We continue to support causes during COVID-19, managing to reach 50 million+ people on critical COVID safety, WASH, Health and Nutrition messaging

10,7OO,000

PEOPLE REACHED

Ehsaas Cash Emergency Program - Supported the government’s largest cash distribution program using digital platforms to reach millions in need during COVID-19.

11,000+

FAMILIES IMPACTED

A ground-breaking behavior change initiative by FAO, aimed to change dietary habits and increase food diversity for families in Balochistan, Pakistan.

UNFPA Helpline
A multi-platform campaign to encourage the use of a Women Safety App and a dedicated helpline for women.

2021

Glacier Lake Outburst Floods Campaign (UNDP) - A behavior-driven campaign on the prevention, protection, and perseverance the Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF) in Northern Pakistan.