Educating the Children of Asia
"The greatest gift you can give is a child's sense of self belief."
As a bank that lives and breathes Asia, we recognise the importance of educating the young because they hold the key to Asia's future. At DBS, we hope to help and empower the children of Asia to bring them closer to their dreams.
Our Journey Begins...
Our corporate social responsibility (CSR) journey for children in Asia began in 2007 with three pilot trips to Jakarta, Mumbai and Shanghai. In all, 200 DBS volunteers from across our regional markets touched 3,000 children.
Indonesia - DBS worked with Sampoerna Foundation to offer 600 scholarships and provide training for 100 teachers. About 150 DBS Indonesia staff and 20 colleagues from Singapore and Hong Kong spent the weekend scrubbing, cleaning and painting the compound of a run-down junior high school in downtown Jakarta.
In India - Through NGOs World Vision India and Aseema, DBS helped to upgrade the infrastructure and facilities of two schools in Mumbai which draw students from slum areas, and provide free education to these children. DBS staff from Hong Kong and Singapore joined their colleagues in India to paint classrooms and create murals.
China - About 20 colleagues from Singapore and Hong Kong planted a rooftop garden together with children at a Shanghai boarding school. Preserving the environment is a growing concern in China, and the initiative aimed to raise awareness of the issue among the young while cultivating the values of responsibility and patience.
Project 80/40
In February 2008, in conjunction with DBS' 40th anniversary, Project 40/40 was launched and staff were encouraged to create, develop and execute their own CSR projects to benefit the children of Asia. The target was 40 projects to be completed over 40 days.
Staff demonstrated their can-do spirit in action for the community, and in the end, the initiative had to be renamed Project 80/40 because the number of projects doubled. 80 projects were completed over 40 days with 1,300 staff touching 8,300 young lives in 11 markets. Close to SGD 200,000 was raised.
One team knocked on the doors of one-room public housing flats with one question for the impoverished children living behind those doors: "What do you need to study better?" Another team spent late nights after work doing bead and wire jewellery to give the children in Bo Kleau, Thailand better furnished classrooms, a playground and library books to read.
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Numerous teams spent weekends taking underprivileged children on educational excursions to the museum, science centre, zoo and even an agro-tourism site for children. And many teams dug into their own pockets to purchase more items and also covered their own travel expenses, like the team that built the first basketball court for the children of Juara, a small village in Tioman. |
DBS Happy Ever Asia Fund
In response to the can-do spirit showed by the DBS staff with Project 80/40, the DBS Happy Ever Asia fund was launched in May 2008, a fund that staff can tap into to continue making that difference to the lives of children in Asia, in the area of learning.
DBS staff are encouraged to create, shape and execute their own initiatives to benefit the children of Asia, with support from the bank. It is hoped that with the formation of this fund, staff can embark on initiatives with greater scale and touch even more young lives in the process.
DBS Children's Day Initiative 2008
In October 2008, DBS collaborated with the five Community Development Councils (CDCs) in Singapore to help over 400 children in the area of learning. In conjunction with Children's Day in Singapore, DBS asked children from low-income families to make their selections from a list of more than 10 educational items, which include study desks, desk lamps and schoolbags. Over 450 staff from DBS and all POSB branches personally delivered the selected items to the children's homes. They were joined on some of these visits by DBS customer Elim Chew, president and founder of 77th Street. Said Elim, who is also director of Social Innovation Park, "Everyone deserves to achieve their dreams and to do well in life. DBS is a good role model as a bank - more companies should come forward to reach out to the children of Asia."
Read more about our country initiatives