Beyond charity: why Pakistan needs a social business movement

Business Recorder

3 days ago

Sustainable development is often discussed as the future, but we rarely pause to ask: what should it actually look like for Pakistan? For decades, we've relied on charity alone to solve social problems. While charity has saved millions of lives and spread hope, yet challenges like hunger, poverty, and inequality persist.
In 2007, Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus popularized the concept of social business, the enterprises built to solve human problems, not maximize profit, while sustaining themselves financially. The idea inspired changemakers across continents.
This year, for the first time, Pakistan formally joined that global conversation. At the Social Business Day in Dhaka, hosted by the Yunus Centre, Rizq led the first-ever Pakistani delegation. We attended the dialogue as a delegation of youth-led solutions. Standing alongside innovators from over 40 countries, we proudly raised Pakistan's flag and shared our story, a living example of what social business can mean for our people.
We saw models from across the globe, like community health cooperatives in Africa, renewable energy enterprises in Europe, local agriculture projects in Asia. Pakistan had never formally been part of that conversation. This year, we changed that.
Not only did Rizq lead the first delegation to Dhaka, but we also organized the first local Country Forum in Lahore. Students, academics, and social innovators explored what this model could mean for Pakistan's future.
How three friends sparked a nationwide movement
Ten years ago, Huzaifa, Qasim, and I started Rizq as an ambitious initiative while we were still sophomores at LUMS. We would drive around Lahore with a car full of surplus food, searching for anyone who might need it.
From the beginning, Rizq's approach was different. At our food banks, recovered food wasn't handed out entirely free; but rather sold at just ten rupees per kilogram. This preserved dignity and encouraged participation. Without realizing it, we were already experimenting with what would become our defining philosophy: creating sustainable systems instead of one-time charity.
What started as small food recovery drives has now grown into a movement for food justice. Over the past decade, Rizq has saved millions of meals from waste, distributed them to families, supported smallholder farmers, and engaged thousands of volunteers in building a hunger-free Pakistan.
But with growth came a familiar challenge: financial fragility. Rizq's work depended largely on seasonal donations and short-term campaigns. Each successful drive was followed by the same question: How do we keep this mission alive when donations slow down?
Charity uplifts but it rarely scales
Charity has transformed lives in Pakistan. It's part of our national identity, be it Edhi's ambulance network or microfinance revolutions led by Dr. Amjad Saqib. Pakistan remains among the most generous countries by per capita giving.
But generosity alone can't replace structure. Charity is powerful but also seasonal, emotional, and inconsistent. It lifts people but doesn't always sustain the system. That's where social business comes in, not to replace charity, but to complement it.
Social business looks like any other enterprise selling products, generating revenue, and running operations, but its purpose is to solve a social problem. There are no dividends; profits are reinvested to grow impact.
Global examples show us what this can look like: Grameen Danone, producing affordable nutrition for children; Grameen Phone, connecting rural communities through mobile access.
For Rizq, this framework crystallized when our CEO and co-founder Qasim Javaid attended the Yunus Social Business Master's Program at AIT Thailand. That experience gave us the vocabulary and perspective for what we had been doing all along: building systems of dignity, not dependence.
Rizq Khana is one of the clearest examples of how our work has shifted from charity to sustainable solutions. At its core, Rizq Khana is a network of small food carts that operate to provide fresh, affordable meals every day for communities that often struggle to access quality food.
Meals are prepared at our kitchens and sold at prices low enough for anyone to afford but high enough to keep the kitchen running. This simple shift, treating people as customers, not 'beneficiaries', preserves dignity and creates ownership.
Each Rizq Khana cart covers its costs, pays its team, and sustains food supply without relying on seasonal donations. In many cases, the people running these carts come from the same neighborhoods they serve, fighting hunger while creating livelihoods. This is social business in practice: a system that feeds people today and stays strong enough to feed them tomorrow.
Pakistan faces urgent challenges like malnutrition, climate impacts, and youth unemployment. Philanthropy alone cannot keep pace with the scale of need. But what if young, bright minds didn't have to choose between earning a living and doing good?
What if they could do both?
We've seen how social business can work. It allowed us to feed people with dignity, create job opportunities, and keep our work running without waiting for the next donation drive.
Now, we want more people to be part of this. We're inviting universities, companies, policymakers, and organizations to join us through partnerships and incubators, and bringing this thinking into classrooms and communities.
When we raised Pakistan's flag at Social Business Day in Dhaka, it felt like a small beginning. Our people have always had the heart to serve; with this model, we finally have a way to make that service last.
Are we ready to lead?