By, Leong Li Ying
When we talk about people who create YouTube content, the first ‘occupation’ that comes into our mind definitely be – YouTuber, Content Creator or even Social Media Influencer. There is a person who became a special rising star just within two days. Up to this point, you might be thinking, is this person a celebrity? A television personality? Or perhaps an emcee?
As a child, her dream job was to make a difference in the lives of other people as an educator. Today, she connects with her learning pathway in the academic side and people’s hearts through her inspirational YouTube content and her determined personality. As learning is a lifelong journey, she is also willing to learn from others and improve herself to become a better person.
This rising star is Veveonah Mosibin, a 19-year-old Malaysian who hails from Kampung Sapatalang in Pitas, Sabah. She is a First Year Degree student at University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) majoring in Marine Science, and she is also a YouTuber with a total of 143K subscribers on her channel.
She is a Sabahan kampung girl at heart who is driven, motivated and a humble person at the same time. This often gives people around her “the-girl-next-door” vibes. Nothing to hide, nothing to flex. The videos she uploaded on her YouTube channel were mostly on the reality of her life, with highlights such as starting a fire with just firewood, peeling coconuts with her bare hands, and digging a well on her own.
Despite the vast differences in terms of facilities and quality of life compared to West Malaysia, such as availability of electricity and internet access, as well as wage disparities, her positive attitude towards life has drawn the attention of a majority of Malaysians in general and West Malaysians specifically to the privileges they enjoy and is a reminder to not take them for granted.
Veveonah had a rather sheltered childhood. Despite having parents who are busy at work, she had numerous memories of her younger self and strived to be someone that can make changes or even impact that guided her to great opportunities and can help the village and the community. That said, her biggest accomplishment is helping the village and community to get better internet connectivity, up to 4G/Unifi Mobile from of Telekom Malaysia.
“Don’t be too naive. Learn as much as possible” is what Veveonah would advise her younger self as she reminisced about her energetic, smart and confident persona.
As she said, she did enjoy school to learn and teach others as she joined a club activity – peer facilitator and made use of time to socialize with people. Since Veveonah was young, she was seen as an all semester award student and a playful child in school. Despite she is a serious person when it comes to handling the task, she loves to read, shooting video, and she is vicariously pulled into outdoor activities that tickle the challenging side of her.
Moreover, if there’s a word to describe her resume, it definitely could be “simple but informative” as she is involved in outdoor aspects and gained a lot of experience from a young age. She is well knowledgeable on outdoor works such as starting a fire from scratch by just using firewood and to dig up a well. It’s truly inspiring that someone of this age can do all of that and all on her own without any help. Usually, most people her age focused more on assignments and studies but for her, she knows how to survive outdoors.
“Love yourself first in order to love others. Always take care of yourself, because no one will do that unless you, yourself. We need to be independent, strong mentally and kind. Never give up in life and stay positive.”
She says that if it wasn’t for her youthful period, she wouldn’t have been where she is today and wouldn’t have learnt what was good for her. With a moderate level of moral compass, she ensures she always listen other’s feedback and learns from others, because she knows that there’s a lot she doesn’t know about herself and the world.
“From what I learned, each country or place has its own morality, and sometimes it would never be the same as in my country. So, I will learn a lot more.”
She has a lot of hobbies in her life journey, drawing, reading, playing computer games, watching movies, and making videos on YouTube. She does however, if there’s only thing she would have changed in her past was to pick up more skills like drumming and start the YouTube channel earlier than now to spend her time to drive the skill to excellency.
To her, power is the force by practicing on something to make herself stronger and confident. The major turning point in her adulthood was when one of her YouTube videos went viral for the first time, and from here, her life changed. The video that went viral is about how she spent 24 hours on a top of tree in order to get a good WIFI signal to complete her online examination. Initially, the student planned to sit in a hut on top of a hill near her village. But the hut collapsed because of strong winds and heavy rain. In the end, she had no choice but to climb up a tree to obtain Internet access. As this drew the attention of the government and the public, she emphasized the issue of Sabah’s development and pointed out how her experience highlighted the disparity in internet access in the country. From this, we know that she is a girl with full determination when she completes a task or her attitude towards life.
As her simplicity, her sincere, her effort and her wilderness attract a lot of people who want to learn from her, interact with her, this could be the power of people who support at the back so that she will have the ability to help others and improve herself. In the end, the government promised to work on the improvement and enhance the development of East Malaysia as well as Sabah.
“There are two types of changes. I can bring change not only for my family, but for my village—there are a lot of positive things that came after I went viral.”
To her, family is number one in her heart and takes priority over everything. She cherishes the moment when she is being together with her family; even her fondest memory with her family was when they received a dinner invitation from the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin. When her video went viral, she approached that change with a positive attitude and accepted and reflected on it, ensuring to cultivate survival skills in order to live after changes happen in life.
Our hero shared her greatest regret and saddest memory in her life and both of it was about friendship. Her best friend hated her because she broke the trust he had but because she valued strong friendship, she asked for forgiveness from him and till this day, they are still friends. Despite having all the ups and downs, the happiest memory Veveonah recalled was travelling. It was her first time travelling by plane as well. She had travelled to Penang as a representative from her school to compete in the young scientist MRSM-Se-Malaysia competition.
Although Veveonah is an independent person, she is humble to the people around her and will express her love and concern through words and actions to those who indeed. You might wonder what our hero wants the most. Well, our hero wants to become successful to help herself and of course, her family to improve the quality of their life. Her motivation to reach her goals come from the concept of motivating others to be positive, open minded and never give up in life no matter what happens.
Her role model growing up has always been her mom; in her eyes, she’s a “SuperMom” with emotional, spiritual, and emotional intelligence, passionate, and kind. The admiration from her mom shaped how she is today. This is the reason why she depends on her mother when she needs practical advice, moral and emotional support. No matter what happens, family will be the one who always backs you up and Veveonah approaches love with a lot of communication and understanding with each other as she believes that the chemistry must work between them.
Veveonah is a caring person who believes that whatever happens, it has its own reason. Veveonah has always volunteered to lend a helping hand to people. If it’s a rainy day, she would collect the rainwater in some big jars, as it can be the water source for their family for their everyday use. Also, she will heat the water in the kettle to make coffee and serve it to her family. And when it is a figuratively rainy day for her, she’ll sleep on it to ease her mind, or talk about it with those she trusts for support and advice.
“It’s fun to have coffee time with family, while it is raining.”
Her biggest strength is always being motivated with a hopeful attitude towards life but it also becomes a fear as she is afraid in some scenarios like unwanted death happening to the people around her.
Veveonah is driven to make sure people are not neglected in their life decision. This is especially true when it comes to moving forward our journey no matter what happens, never give up, and learn from mistakes.
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