You Can’t Change the Wind, but You Can Change the Sails
Full Name: Mohd Azmi Bin Taib
Country: Malaysia
Location: Penang
Batch No.: Phase 2, Batch 7
Date Trained: 13 – 15 December 2015
Disability: Paralysed waist down (wheelchair user)
Business: Fish Culture & Fish Farming
Average Monthly Income Before: RM 2,000
Average Monthly Income After: RM 5,500
Mohd Azmi, being an ambitious person, had massive dreams of progressing and achieving in life. Life took a turn for the worse when he was left paralysed waist down due to an occupational injury while he was repairing a faulty elevator in 2012. A lot transpired in a short time and after months of undergoing thorough medical treatments, it transpired that there was no medical solution and he was bound to a wheelchair for life. Adding to the mess, he was forced to resign from his job which at that time, was his only source of income. “Adjusting to life with a disability was a difficult transition”, Azmi said. From being independent, he was now handicapped and had to depend on people to cater to his personal needs and activities such as transportation and mobility and access to necessities. Bouts of anger and depression followed triggered by a knowing that his dreams were all shattered. His plans of pursuing further education and getting married, also came to an immediate halt. After what seemed like the constant hardship, Azmi fell into depression and started isolating himself for fear of being judged, excluded and mistreated.
Looking at Azmi’s deteriorating health and mental condition, his family became really worried. Azmi would not speak and began withdrew himself from people. However, with constant adequate support from his family and friends, Azmi started coming to terms with reality and moved on to adapt to his new life. He stepped out of his comfort zone to pursue a fish culturing business and started his own fish-farming business at the Penang Agro Farm. He refused to allow himself to be subjected to rejection again at work, due to his physical disabilities. Hence, he was resolute to be his own boss. However, Azmi was hit with more blows when potential customers began hesitating to do business with him because of his disabilities. He was also having difficulties keeping up with ideas and planning strategies to ensure his business start up could sustain itself.
Joining the Maybank R.I.S.E programme enabled a big turnaround for him. Besides providing him with the business skills to overcome his problems, the programme helped him discover endless possibilities with his potential and skill sets, which eventually allowed him to secure bigger sales with bigger clients. Shortly after, Azmi took a step further to commence classes for other marginalised on fish-culture so that he could use his skills and talents to impact others focusing on both people with disabilities and those margnalised fully abled as well. From his experience, he felt theoretical knowledge wasn’t sufficient to ensure successful breeding of fishes. So he tailored a programme to enable other marginalised business owners who hungered for practical knowledge on fish culturing to avoid having losses of stock like he did. After painfully suffering from low self-esteem from losing his job, he was now even more empowered to expand his business in fish-farming and poultry trading. The R.I.S.E programme also enabled him to change perceptions and negative stereotypes towards people with disabilities not being capable business people, and he started increasing his orders by finding customers who were willing to work with him.
“Going through the R.I.S.E. program I realized my disabilities were not a hindrance and this gave me a new outlook in life. Having my family stand firmly by me also made a world of difference” Azmi added. Feeling immensely grateful and indebted, he only wanted to provide a comfortable life for them in return. Not having children of his own, he began to financially support his nieces and nephews’ tuition classes to see them excel in school. It gave him pride knowing that he is providing them with an opportunity for a better future as he constantly felt his dreams of pursuing his own education further were short-lived. He aspires to see his nephews and nieces succeed in life. Besides, by cultivating a good relationship with them, he teaches them to accept people of all walks of life and treat them equally despite their shortcomings.
Azmi wants to be a role model, he also bears his family’s monthly expenses like utilities and food expenses and also pays for his siblings’ education at tertiary level after the demise of their mother. He now acts as the head of the family. “Most importantly, I could now afford to take my wife on a holiday after deferring that idea for the longest time”, adding that his wife was his strongest support, and remained unmoved despite the testing times. He also added that he is tremendously indebted to Maybank Foundation for turning his life around and empowering him personally and economically, to turnaround everything that went wrong in his life.
