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Do you have a dream or a passion? What’s stopping you from pursuing your dreams?

DBS’ new brand campaign “Spark Something” aims to bring joy to banking by igniting possibilities and bringing people’s ambitions and inspirations to life. A simple spark could lead to something bigger and more meaningful but everything starts with a spark.

The campaign encourages people to share their own sparks and DBS may ignite some of those sparks. All you have to do is to submit your spark on www.dbs.com/spark and they might bring it to life!

So what’s my spark?

As all of you know, I am into FOOD. Coming from a family who used to run F&B businesses, I remember how all my family members will go and help out in my grandfather’s hainanese pork porridge stall – from cleaning the bowls to serving it. Then I became a food writer in publications, interviewing chefs and writing about food trends. Now, I am running Miss Tam Chiak, a blog that allows me to share about Singapore food with everyone in the world. Food definitely connects people together, just like how it has brought me closer with my family and friends.

But there are so much more that I can do with this passion of mine. I wanted to use food to connect more people and help the community. Recently, I worked for a café and got to know a bunch of youth-at-risks. One of them started with zero knowledge about making a cup of coffee. But after a few months, the boy has become a talented barista. We have seen how each of them has become better and I was very happy that they were given a second chance to live life again.

With the idea in mind, we had a meeting with DBS and ta-deh… a café trail was confirmed! This is not any other café trail. In this café trail, we visited 3 café with social missions.

CAFÉ TRAIL BEGINS…

With the staff from Bizlink and Blisse Café. Bizlink Cafe is an F&B social enterprise that has a mission to serve good food with a great cause. They collaborated with Institute of Mental Health to provide training and employment to the disadvantaged, especially mental patients. BliSSE is a café created by the People’s Association that provides training and employment to single mothers, persons with disabilities, and at-risk youth.

Practising my tour guiding skills as I share with them the stories behind all the cafes that we were heading to.

… { FOOD FOR THOUGHT } …

Address: #B1-00 Singapore Botanic Gardens, Tanglin Gate, 1 Cluny Road, Singapore 259569
Tel: 6338 4848
Website: www.foodforthought.com.sg

Our first stop was Food for Thought at Botanical Gardens. Founded in 2007, Food for Thought is a pioneering F&B social enterprise in Singapore. They use restaurants as a way to transform and revive public community spaces. Here, they serve free water to encourage customers to make a voluntary donation instead to help give someone that same privilege through Living Water International. They aim to build a well a year in India. In addition, the team commit part of our profits to sponsor 8 children through World Vision Singapore’s area development projects throughout Asia.

Their menu provides high quality, nutritious, yet still relatively affordable mid-market options for the average Singaporean student, worker and young family.

Some of the items we ordered include 5-Spice Roasted Duck Breast, Orange & Lychee Salad, Slow Roasted Pulled Pork Burger, Hoisin Har Cheong Braised Ribs, and Steak and Sambal Potatoes. I was recommended to try the Chai Spice Brulee Salmon served with red capsicum risotto and apricot raisin chutney. It was lovely – the salmon was juicy and the risotto imparts a umami flavour.

Co-founder Shiao-Yin shared with us more about the mission of Food for Thought and how they encourage a culture of community learning and sharing by running free community sessions for the public to learn. Thank you for the hospitality, Food for Thought!

… { FIX CAFÉ } …

Address: 31 Ah Hood Road #01-06 HomeTeamNS-JOM, Singapore 329979
Tel: 6256 1484
Website: http://fix-cafe.com.sg

The second café we visited was FIX, a poolside café at HomeTeamNS Balestier. Fix was created entirely around the aim of giving at-risk youth a second chance in life. It has two qualified social workers on board full-time to provide counselling and training for at-risk youth employees during and after operation hours. The counsellors double as pastry chef and coffee barista at the cafe, where they oversee a team of five at-risk youth hired through the recommendation of youth centres in the neighbourhood.

Their signature items include Chicken Tikka Naanwich and Beef & Kimchi Naanwich. They take a piece of traditional naan, sandwich all kinds of tasty fillings within and top it all off with a fresh salad and a soft egg! We also tried many cakes and particularly love the Strawberry Pistachio Rose Tart with moist and nutty pistachio financier, perfect with the fresh strawberries and dollop of subtly-scented rose cream. FIX café is halal certified.

… { JOAN BOWEN CAFE } …

Address: 9 Jalan Wangi, Singapore 348359
Tel: 6281 3629
Website: www.joanbowen.com

Named after their daughter, Joan Bo Wen, this arts-themed café-cum-culinary centre trains and imparts lifelong skills to youths with special needs. Khong Yoon Kay and Jeanne Seah train up 5 young adults each day to serve more than 30 dishes including fish and chips and chilli crab pasta, and 11 types of coffee. The youths in turn get to gain confidence and discover their special talents.

Unlike most cafés that have the luxury of changing their menu items weekly, Joan Bowen café may have some difficulty in this area. The trainees have to practise several times to cook a dish and by changing the menu, it will disrupt their workflow. One of the trainees, Soon Hock, shared with us how he painstakingly oven cook the duck confit for 6 hours before pan-frying it. He needs a little help with the explanation but he has definitely executed the duck confit very well.

Thank you Joan Bowen for such a great meal!

BACK AT DBS OFFICE…

After a long day of café trail, we were back at DBS office where the team gave us a grand welcome!

I can’t thank enough to DBS. They have been such great planners and supporters through #myspark journey. This café trail has definitely made me understand more about social enterprises and I really hope it inspires everyone to pursue your dream.

DBS has even prepared a gift for all the participants. That’s really sweet of them! Thank you DBS for igniting my spark!

Everybody’s got a spark. An inspiration, an aspiration, an idea. It ignites possibilities and where it takes you can be amazing. So if you’ve got a dream or a passion, big or small, send it across and they just make it happen! Just like what Walt Disney says, if you can dream it, you can do it! Submit your spark on www.dbs.com/spark and DBS might bring it to life.