TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Singaporean multinational banking and financial services corporation DBS Bank Ltd on Wednesday launched the latest episode of their on-going "DBS SPARKS (點亮星光)" mini-series.
The show is based on the various real-life heartwarming stories of people and companies which DBS have helped.
The series stars an ensemble cast featuring veteran Singaporean actor Adrian Pang (彭耀順), best-known for his role as Keith Yan in the Michael Mann blockbuster "Blackhat," where he acted alongside Chris Hemsworth, Wang Leehom (王力宏) and Tang Wei (湯唯).
In the latest episode, the show invited local Atayal actor and pastor Nolay Piho (林慶台) to guest star as a village chief in China's Yunnan province, who initially valued tradition over progress, going head to head with the show's leading young actors.
Thanks to the efforts and sincerity of the DBS team, the village chief opened his mind to adopting the technology developed by real-life tech company, Zaya Learning Labs, for the sake of his business and the educational development of the youths in his village.
"Following my previous acting opportunities, I was very careful when selecting the roles that were offered to me," Piho said. "However, when I saw the script for this show, I knew I had to take the role because as a pastor of an underprivileged area settled by a minority ethnic group myself, I could relate to the difficulties and conflict my character had. The lack of resources of the village depicted in the short also reflected my own upbringing, which was why it was so easy for me to get into character."
According to DBS Taiwan's Group Strategic Marketing & Communications Director Anita Su (蘇怡文), the episode aimed to emphasize the company's efforts in supporting social enterprises such as Zaya Learning Labs and Taiwan's Aurora Social Enterprise (光原社會企業).
Su said as of 2016, DBS had associated itself with over 100 social enterprises in Taiwan, and had invested over NT$50 million to help progress and cultivate local companies that were established with social wellness as their core value.
"The hardest thing about running a social enterprise, is balancing our profit to survive and to help those in need," said Aurora Social Enterprise Chairman Patrick Wang (王鵬超). "One of the challenges we had faced was to help local farmers solve the problem of having visually unappealing crops. But thanks to the help of DBS Bank Ltd, we were able to get a generous loan through their Social Enterprise package and help local farmers set up a restaurant to turn the vegetables into profit. We would most likely not have received approval for loans from
other banks, much less a deal package
that was as fair as the one DBS provided."
According to DBS's Taiwan Group Strategic Marketing & Communications Senior Associate Rachel Fang (方琪雯) a SPARKS episode shot and based on a Taiwanese story is currently under production.
The current episode which guest starred Piho is now available on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0eRYYm05Hc
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