Dear friends and supporters,

I was once the owner of my very own tutoring institute. A modest-sized tutoring place based on the upper floor of a shop-lot in the suburban area of Pengkalan in the city of Ipoh, in the state of Perak, in Malaysia.

10 years ago, I was offered a better job opportunity by someone I viewed as a dear friend, and the job did indeed give me good benefits and income.

However, that person was manipulative, and when I did not do as he wanted me to do in certain areas of my personal life (he did not believe in job/personal separation), he dismissed me.

When I joined to work with this former friend, I let go of my tutoring institute. When he fired me, I was destitute and really struggled hard to rebuild. However, I managed to find a new job that paid modestly, and found a few private tutoring classes, enabling me to stay somewhat afloat financially.

Ever since then for the last 10 years, I have been working paycheck-to-paycheck. It wasn't the best, but I had a fairly decent life.

However, things have changed recently, as I have an opportunity to return to being an owner of a business.

My current boss in the current tutoring institute where I am working seeks to let go of his holdings in the institute, to form a 45-55% partnership. As I have been the longest-serving teacher in the institute so far, he has prioritised me for buying that share.

Note that my boss wants only ONE person to hold the 45% stake, as he prefers the tutoring institute to have only a two-person decision-making group.

To get hold of that 45% stake in the institute, I will need around US$ 6,000. So far, with my savings and some help from relatives, I have managed to garner around US$ 1,000.

However, the situation took another turn, unfortunately for the worse, recently.

My mother's car was stolen when her house was broken into. It's a 9-year-old thing, not too expensive, but it was one of the few things my late father left to her. It was worth around US$ 11,000 at the time of purchase (new) and at the time of its theft its value would have been estimated at US$ 5,100.

Now, without her car, my mother's promise US$ 800 to help me buy the shares in the institute has definitely evaporated. In addition to that, she has absolutely no transportation and lives on a very modest pension (approx. US$ 385 per month).

Ride-sharing is prohibitively expensive in my town, Ipoh, to be even considered as a long-term solution or alternative, and public transport leaves much to be desired as it does not cover all the important locations in my mother's weekly commute.

I now have to ferry her back and forth to wherever she needs to go, including church, the market, grocery shops, and relatives' houses. Petrol costs are piling up, and my own car (an ancient 21-year-old thing) has radiator issues and air-conditioning issues of its own, so I don't know how long it will be before it gives out or breaks down.

I know of a very valuable English saying, which goes as follows:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

I know, I am asking for a handout. But I am not asking for a handout to be spent on temporary sustenance, to be requested for again when it has run out.

I ask for this handout so that I may procure a (metaphorical) fishing rod for myself, in the form of the tutoring institute. Once I have the tutoring institute, my boss has promised that the end-of-year tutoring profits will be divided between us, and I will have my 45% share even if I have just bought in, in November or December.

So, people, community, friends, I ask of you to just help me reach this target once. Help me reach self-sufficiency. The profits I get once I successfully buy in will also help me to contribute to helping my mother obtain a replacement vehicle (the insurance claim will not be enough, to buy even a decent second-hand vehicle would still require her to fork out around US$ 3,700).

The deadline is approaching fast. My boss is willing to wait for a little while more, and he has stated that while the buy opportunity remains exclusively reserved for me for all of November, he may begin to consider reaching out to other potential buyers in December, before the Lunar New Year ends in late February. I don't have much time.

Therefore, I need this boost to clear this major hurdle, in order to achieve self-sufficiency. I have not had this opportunity for years, and it is probably my best and most economical path to get back to financial self-sufficiency.

I do not have much to offer in the way of rewards, but to any and everyone who helps, I will be deeply and sincerely grateful.

If the target is achieved, I will share photographs of my classes and students with any and all major contributors.

Please help me in this moment of my dire need.

My sincere thanks in advance.