User:Vipul/Rice Bucket Challenge

The Rice Bucket Challenge is a variant of and response to the Ice Bucket Challenge that started in India and spread to other South Asian nations. Whereas the original Ice Bucket Challenge involved participants pouring a bucket of ice over their heads and/or donating to the ALS Association, the Rice Bucket Challenge involves donating a bucket of rice to a poor person or family.

Significance
As an alternative to the Ice Bucket Challenge, the Rice Bucket Challenge served the dual purpose of highlighting water scarcity (in that the use of ice was considered expensive and wasteful) and poverty (in that a bucket of rice was considered a valuable donation by recipients).

History
The idea for the Rice Bucket Challenge is attributed to Manju Latha Kalanidhi, a 38-year-old journalist based in Hyderabad, India. She considered the Ice Bucket Challenge artificial and wasteful of water, and came up with the Rice Bucket Challenge as a less wasteful alternative that would help local communities. It started off as a Facebook page on August 23, 2014, and within a day, the page had 7000 likes. On August 24, 2014, the Twitter hashtag #ricebucketchallenge was first used, and within a month, the hashtag had been tweeted 11,000 times. On August 25, the Rice Bucket Challenge was covered in BuzzFeed and Quartz, and within a few days, it had received coverage in the Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, CNN, CNBC, NPR, NDTV, Time, and many other news websites.

The Rice Bucket Challenge spread to other South Asian nations, including Nepal and Sri Lanka. A businessman in Manila in the Philippines attempted to start the challenge in the Philippines.