Serving exceptionalities people community to inspire local community:

An interview with Encik Mohammad Bin Abdullah

INTERVIEW: This interview was conducted by Rohana Mohamed with Encik

Mohammad Bin Abdullah a former of special education teacher, founder and president of

Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO). The interviewee took some time to answer some questions about

how Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) came to be, the philosophies it holds and tools that

exceptionalities people community can use to mobilize communities locally. He enjoys the

challenges and rewards that working with this group of students and the communities brings.

Encik Mohammad Bin Abdullah a former special education spent his almost a half

quarter of decade during his 35 years experience as a teacher in special education program before

retires at age of 58 years old in 2007. He is also founder and president of Komuniti Prihatin

OKU (KPO). He is really passionate about what he does and loves the children he helps every

day. It describes how his need to serve the exceptionalities people community. His love for

special education world has led him on an incredible journey, impacting people across the local

community.

Encik Mohammad Bin Abdullah loves the adventures that the special education

program had been offered in this field. He finds out that it is a challenging to work and to be with

‘people that seems no other wants to work with’. He was inspired to finally settle down as a

special education teacher because of the arrival of his ‘special daughter’ as the greatest gift from

God to his family. His daughter was diagnosed as Autism patient and from that experiences, he

see things so much more differently than if others never been a parent or trying to have one. He

could definitely feel the same way as other parents did by having the special kids. He and his

family spent almost all the time to cope with the behavior of his beautiful daughter with Autism.

He said most of the parents must consider how children with special needs respond to any form

of stress and anticipate these and more extreme reactions following a crisis. In his last five years

of the service as a special education programs teacher in school, he only got the chance to bring

the extra curricular in his lesson planning and this gave such a huge impact to himself, his

student, an exceptionalities community and local community as a whole. The successful on most

of the learning process’s objective in those years has lighten up the spark and opened his mind to

bring the brightness to these selected gifted community who really need a guidance to lead their

life the way they are able to. Form all the experience as a former teacher in special education

program; he uses his experiences to tackle this ‘special’ student to look at education from their

own perspective. Students with disabilities normally depending upon their level of emotional

maturity and ability to understand the concepts of what they learned. Most of them are not able

to process and apply abstract concepts without difficulty, unlike the normal students. Some

students with disabilities have also difficulties with social skills and self-management, and may

need additional instruction in anger control, tolerance of individual differences and self-

monitoring. Some of them may have difficulties with verbal learning, memory and

communication. Despite of the disabilities, from his observation throughout the years, he could

see the skills and the spirit that can be polished inside of his students that could bring the brighter

life in their future. He believes the willingness of his student to learn and gain knowledge from

different method of learning process will later give them an opportunity to look upon their self

ability thus gain their self confidence in order to lead the better future. As a person who believe

exceptionalities community had a right to have a place and bright future in the community, Encik

Mohammad came out with the idea by providing a community a place where they can possibly

give the service such as their skills hence give them an opportunity to develop the confidence to

live like a normal people who able to accomplish every chores that had been given to them and

live with everything they earn from all the effort they offer. From that significant point of view,

he set up a community to help those exceptionalities people called ‘Komuniti Prihatin OKU’

(KPO) as a medium to expand their skills they have. This milestone project is strongly supported

by the Ministry of Social Welfare (JKM), Ministry of Education under Pejabat Pelajaran Daerah

Sabak Bernam, Perusahaan Desa Community and individual who are very concern about

exceptionalities community as well as the local community.

Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) started in the early 2007 committed in helping OKUs to

survive and develop the skills including the hands on skill and life skills which might help them

in the future. This community is responsible in giving this exceptionalities people community

who need the assistance of skilled, experienced professionals in order to reach their full potential

and a job opportunity as a kick-start for them to get used in working environment that outside

world had been offered. This effort has also contributed significantly in encouraging the local

community around to give a helping hand for exceptionalities people community in pursuing a

better life. The challenge is to provide an opportunity for exceptionalities people community that

may inspire them to confront the outside world and to encourage them to boost their self esteem.

Besides, the focus is on developing and providing the tools and starting base of empowerment to

emphasis on ability rather than disability and to polish up the skills that can be applied as a

service in local community thus create hope among them to start a brighter life. The programs

that had been provided by Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) to this exceptionalities community are

laundry services, car wash & workshop services, and a small local business centre to expand and

sell all the products from “Perusahaan Desa Community”.

KPO Dobi Station has been set up as a starting point of Komuniti Prihatin OKU’s (KPO)

charity project where it provided a laundry services to the local community at Sabak Bernam and

Sungai Besar area. KPO Laundry Station operated by eight OKU assisted by 3 workers and run

from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm from Monday to Saturday. The station caters to "Dry-Cleaning"

requirements, airwash of toys and simple laundry requirements. Local community seems to give

a huge and continuous support by trusting on their services and keep promoting the laundry

station to the others. On top of that, Pejabat Pelajaran Daerah Sabak Bernam also keeps on

supporting and trusting on this laundry station services by come forward and arranging the

monthly laundry services for the 32 primary and secondary schools in Sabak Bernam. These

include laundry services for bed sheets and curtain for Aid Room (Bilik Kesihatan) from all

schools, hostel’s bed sheets, and school uniform’s society such as Kadet Polis, Bulan Sabit

Merah and Kadet Remaja Sekolah. Besides there were a few catering company also give KPO

Dobi Station a trust by cleaning their properties for any events and occasions such as table’s

skirt, mat and tent’s side scallop. The KPO Dobi Station aims to improve the lives of the

exceptionalities whereby they can contribute to the society and try to independently operate a

business. At the very beginning of the project, all of them has been trained by Encik Mohammad

himself and few of his former colleagues back at his last school, SMK Seri Kencana. The

modification and adjustment of special education’s program curricular depending on the level of

the students has given an advantage to teachers to train these special’s students the hands-on

skills that could give them a specific skills that they manage to handle. The training course has

been conducted as early as they entered the secondary schools and the training continuously

repeated until present. The training and learning course included how to manage the reception

counter so that they able the encounter and confront the customer themselves. Besides, they were

trained on the flow of the laundering process, how to operate the washing machine, how to

measure the correct quantity of detergent needed, how to use the laundering equipment such as

iron and iron steamer, how to sort the clothes, how to tag the clothes, how to fold the clothes,

how to hang the clothes and how to pack all the clothes once the laundering process completed.

This training must be continuously repeated as most of them are slow learner student, student

with syndrome down and student with physical limitation who needed long-term training to

ensure their competency in all the skills that they had learned. After finishes the secondary

school’s years, most of their parents agreed to give their kids a chance to independently survive

by applying their skills to provide a local community their own service. This will give them a

chance to stand tall in their bid to become more successful in life.

In addition to that, Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) was also set up a small car wash and

workshop services in their programs named KPO Workshop. The objective of these services is

similar to the laundry services where it was functioning as a basement to develop the skill among

the special students and the exceptionalities community itself. However the focus of these

services is more to the male students with learning disabilities and hearing disabilities where

male students themselves are strongly engrossed when it comes to the transport such as cars and

motorcycles. From that common observable fact, Encik Mohammad and his former colleagues

were also has trained some of the students of the basic steps on how to troubleshoot the cars and

motorcycles. KPO Car Services was formerly owned by Encik Mohammed and after he started

the Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO), he was dedicated the workshop to be apart of this charity

project to help this exceptionalities community to develop the skills. From his observation, the

student which he and his friends taught with the troubleshoot skills; most of the students could

catch up all the skills very easily. From that point of view, he believe that those special student

manage to conduct themselves and able to practice what they have learned successfully if they

have the spirit of willingness and the like what are things they did. They cannot be forced to do

what the things the dislike especially when it comes to learn new things. KPO Workshop is

currently operating at 11 am until 6 pm. At KPO Workshop, Encik Mohammad already hired

four normal workers to work with him. However he let some of his former special student to

assist all the workers and at the same time they can keep continuing to practice and develop the

troubleshooting skills and somehow try to cope with the real working environment. They are

very generous and constantly lending their helping hand to all the workers so that all the pending

works can be settled on the given time constraint. On top of that, he believe by confronting the

customer themselves and joining the community will be able to educate them the soft skill such

as helpful, humble, eager to learn new things, independent and willing to confront the outside

world.

Another charity project that has been initiated by Encik Mohammad Bin Abdullah in

Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) is providing a small local business centre that was actually

started early of last year. The purpose of this project called KPO Bazaar is to expand and sell all

the finish products from Perusahaan Desa Community such as variety of banana’s cracker, nut’s

cracker, tobacco’s cracker and etc besides selling his family’s own food industry product such as

Nata De Coco and Virgin Coconut Oil. However the food industry named Kencana Food

Industries is one of his family’s drop-down businesses that have been established 11 years ago.

This shop was also helping to sell the handcraft such as basket and souvenir created by visual

disability people from Social Welfare Centre.

Kencana Food Industries provided a training and job opportunity to those who are from

poor family and need additional money to support the family. In addition to that, this industry

was also giving a training course to exceptionalities people community who need a chance to

expand their skills. Encik Mohammad and his wife will usually train these peoples at the factory

in variety of job scope such as dealing with raw materials, dealing with the machine and

packaging. Normally he will attach those exceptionalities people at "Packaging Station" of Nata

De Coco product. Encik Mohammad and his wife will train them from starting process of

packaging the finished product like dealing with the container, how to operate the machine in

order to put the product inside the container, how to secure the container until the process of

placing the finish product inside the box to be distributed out. From this kind of task, he believes

it will teach them to pay attention of any instruction given, obey the rules and increase their self

confidence.

KPO Bazaar which is established in January 2010 committed in placing and selling food

products from Komuniti Perusahaan Desa as a cooperative effort from both side to encourage

each other’s business as well selling both products from Kencana Food Industries. As he

contributes KPO Bazaar in one of the Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) charity project, he already

gives the opportunity to the exceptionalities people to operate the shop independently under his

wife’s supervision and assistance. KPO Bazaar operated under four exceptionalities people with

hearing problems, two physical limitation problem’s people and people with learning disability

problems. Encik Mohammad and wife have a faith in those exceptionalities peoples as they knew

how truthful and diligent they are in completing the chores that had been assigned to them. At

the very beginning of the projects, Encik Mohammad, his wife and his two sons conducted

continues in-house training for this four exceptionalities people on how to manage the shop

properly and effectively. They need a direct instruction with explicit instruction throughout the

process. The training and learning course included how to manage the reception counter so that

they able the encounter and confront the customer themselves, how to systematize the store

book, record book and the account book, how to organize the product in place, how to tidying up

the shop and how to tag the price indicator for all the products. From this experience, all of them

will surely gain the confidence to interact with the customers to buy the products, make an effort

to be a systematic person, coping with wide range of customer’s manners, gain the experience in

business field, realizing the fact that they are able to help others in many ways and the most

important things they appreciate the money they manage to get from all their hard work as much

they appreciate all of their parent’s efforts to raise them.

Throughout the four amazing years of experienced in setting up this charity project in

helping the exceptionalities people community, there’s a lot of remarkable challenge that he and

his family as well his team faces in order to complete the course. The biggest challenge that he

would never forget is to please the constantly trust from the parents to rely their kid’s faith on

this project. It was so hard to make them believe that their kids might have the brighter future if

they were being exposed to the working environment and been given an opportunity to expend

the skills. In addition, it was so challenging when people had given the bad perception on what

his team were trying to do. There were so much negative feedbacks that he had received from

such people who only judged by looking on the surface rather than judging on the objectives and

the outcomes of the project. One of the feedbacks that he could never put away from his mind

was “he tries to take advantages from the disabilities of the community and made money out of

that”. He tried to make the local community understand how this charity was so beneficial for

both side; the local community and the exceptionalities people community itself. Besides, there

are so much effort and patience needed in order to train the exceptionalities people community.

They need a special training depending their level of intellectual and limitation of their physical

such as hearing, visual and the body itself. When people do consider about those limitations and

entertain this exceptionalities people community in the right way, we could see that they are very

inquisitive, they are fun, and they are definitely task-oriented, if the task at hand is worth doing

and when it comes to learn the hands-on skills.

All in all, there are few reminders that he wants to spread to the local community who are

trying to contribute to this exceptionalities people community. It is important to understand

where the level of these people is and do not underestimate the ability of these exceptionalities

people. Developing basic social skills such as following direction and staying on task is the most

important and the method of applying the repetition, hear, see, and write are crucial.

Communication, understanding and the continued support emotionally and mentally is essential

in bonding these two communities. Collaboration is a key among the local community and this

exceptionalities people community to become a helpful and caring community.

In conclusion, this interview with the person who contributed to the exceptionalities

people community to serve a services to help in boosting the local economy was eventually

helped the others to better understand the issues involving in dealing with those people with

special needs. It also confirmed the fact that person who are intend to be apart of this special

world need to recognize that all exceptionalities people have special needs of one kind or

another. Besides, the awareness of the clinical definitions that address each of the various needs

of this exceptionalities people of the process in dealing with exceptionalities people are very

important in encouraging them to accept their weaknesses as a challenge to pursue their dreams.

Questions:

1. What or who inspired you to become a teacher?

2. Was there any certain experience that caused you to want to teach gifted students?

3. What or who inspired you to initiate the Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) and what the

objectives of this community?

4. How the Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) inspired the local community in terms of

helping people?

5. How many exceptionalities people involved in the Komuniti Prihatin OKU (KPO) and

was there any impact of this effort in their life?

6. Were there any challenges throughout the experience in helping this exceptionalities

people community?

7. Is there any last word that you want to clarify to people out there who are trying to

inspire community from helping the others?

Interview with Encik Mohammad Bin Abdullah

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