Gulmira Batpakulova

Before the accident, Gulmira Batpakulova was a young woman who moved through the world freely. Her life looked ordinary from the outside, school, friends, dreams, but she carried within her a quiet determination to make something meaningful of her future. Then, in 1993, everything changed. A traumatic injury fractured the cervical and thoracic vertebrae in her spine. A new identity, person with disability, entered her life overnight. In 1998, she was officially assigned to the first disability group. A wheelchair became her companion, a symbol of loss at first, before it evolved into something entirely different: a platform, a movement, a road forward.

It was not an easy transformation. When speaking about the early years, she doesn’t dwell on grief, but it is felt lingering in the pauses between her words. The world around her changed as much as her body did. The Qazaqstan of the 1990s was not a place prepared for disability inclusion. Adapted infrastructure, equal access, public understanding, these concepts barely existed. But Gulmira refused to shrink into the margins where society often pushes people after injury. She found strength in community. She found purpose in helping others survive what she had survived. “We were involved in public activities,” she says, remembering the beginnings of her calling. Together with others newly disabled and long disabled, she began advocating, first for herself, then for everyone like her. They went office to office, meeting to meeting, explaining, insisting: people with disabilities deserve education, jobs, dignity, and independence. It was exhausting work, but necessary.

In 2006, this activism crystallized into something permanent: a collective built on solidarity. They registered the “Arba” public association in 2009, Arba, meaning “wheelchair,” but also evoking movement, the ability to transport weight, to continue traveling even across difficult landscapes. A wheelchair was not simply a device, it was freedom when the ground itself is uneven. The association works with all categories and groups of disability, embracing the full spectrum of human need. Its purpose is deeply human: “As soon as someone becomes disabled,” she explains, “we support them until their full inclusion into an active societal life.” The newly disabled often experience the darkest isolation, physical, emotional, economic. Gulmira and her team refuse to let them fall into that void alone.

But advocacy alone is not enough. In Qazaqstan, NGOs struggle with sustainability. Projects come and go with funding cycles. To truly support people, to give them a place to work, to learn, to heal, she needed something stable. A livelihood. A business. And so Gulmira took a bold turn toward social entrepreneurship. Her business began with sewing, repairing clothes, designing lingerie, crafting bed linens, and later, creating beautiful bridal and souvenir items. What began as a small operation grew into the primary income-generating activity of the association. “Yes, we have a team,” she says with pride. A team that includes people who once thought they had nothing left to contribute

“Employment for people with disability,” she says firmly, “is our main goal.” For that goal, she refuses to compromise on expectations. Her team produces quality, or they don’t release the product. “Society doubts,” she admits, “that people with disabilities can produce high-quality products and be competitive.” She has lived inside that prejudice for decades. But she has also outgrown it. In the last five years, this doubt has shifted. “We built our image,” she says. “We have proven ourselves.” Customers return, because quality dismantles stereotypes faster than words. Sewing expanded into baking, pies and pastries made by hands that were once dismissed. Then into IT technologies, managing Instagram pages, blogging, content creation. “We have started working in other areas,” she says, almost shyly, though the scale of what they are accomplishing is anything but small. They are learning constantly, adapting relentlessly, reinventing themselves as opportunities shift.

But challenges remain. Some are subtle, whispered doubts, lingering stigma, while others are physical and unavoidable. To buy raw materials, they must navigate narrow doors, steps without ramps, warehouses inaccessible by wheelchair. “Physical barriers,” she sighs. “So many.” If independence means managing production from start to finish, then independence requires access, and the city often refuses it. So Gulmira does what she has always done: she builds community. Volunteers, families, social work students, young people hungry for purpose, help carry what her team physically cannot. Through collaboration with universities, she helps train future professionals not only academically, but emotionally, to understand disability as humanity, not difference. Stress, however, is a silent tax she pays daily. “Not very positively for my health,” she admits. Leadership demands decisions, advocacy demands conflict, entrepreneurship demands risk. “Constant stress and consequences.” Her smile tightens here, some costs cannot be seen, but they accumulate over time. She once found peace sitting beside a lake, holding a fishing rod next to her husband. “Even without catching anything,” she says, “it was energizing.” Her husband has since passed away. Fishing trips are memories now, soft, painful, and sacred. Books have become her escape. Pages are a kind of freedom, places where movement is limitless

“Mentorship,” she stresses. “It is rare. But greatly needed.”

Training programs teach theory. Markets demand survival. Without continuous guidance, many entrepreneurs with disabilities fail before they bloom. Entrepreneurship has changed her internally. “More financial independence,” she notes. That means more control, more agency, more dignity. She has learned to manage a team of fourteen people, fourteen people who depend on her leadership, but also who strengthen her capacity to dream. Yet, she remains humbly self-aware: “I still feel there’s a knowledge gap hindering growth. Something is still missing.” This humility is not insecurity, it is her engine. She wants stability, a constant stream of income that safeguards the future of her association and the families it supports. She wants to recruit and train new team members so she can be more mobile, not because she wants to step back, but because leadership grows by empowering others to rise. “If each team member had more knowledge, I’d be more mobile,” she explains. Independence multiplies when shared.

Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs with disabilities is wise: “Engage initially in public activities,” she says. See the world. Understand people. Learn where your voice and skills align with real needs. Then choose your path. When entrepreneurship rises from purpose rather than panic, success takes root. Gulmira’s story is not about overcoming disability, it is about redesigning society so disability does not need to be overcome. It is about transforming exclusion into economic contribution, transforming pity into partnership, transforming weakness into collective strength. Her work answers a call deeper than profit, a call rooted in the Qazaq spirit of interdependence, in the dignity of eńbek (labor), in the belief that every person has something precious to give. And recently she gave birth to her daughter. Though she may sit in a wheelchair, she is not sitting still. She leads. She creates. She builds bridges, both literal and symbolic, where walls once stood. She supports those who have newly fallen into darkness, and she walks with them until they find their way back into light, into community, into the beating heart of society.

When we talk about progress, policy, or inclusion, we often forget that true transformation begins with individuals who refuse to accept limitations imposed upon them. Gulmira does not carry slogans, she carries responsibility. She does not fight for special treatment, she fights for equity. Her wheelchair does not hold her back; it carries her exactly where she intends to go. Her journey embodies the harmony of aqyl (mind), jurek (heart), and qairat (will), the essence of Abai’s Tolyq Adam. People like Gulmira do not wait for a better Qazaqstan. They build it. Hand by hand. Stitch by stitch. Life by transformed life. And through her, others learn to see that disability does not define human worth, contribution does