A photograph of a Syrian refugee and his daughter selling pens at a road junction in Beirut has prompted a global campaign to help them that raised more than $50,000 yesterday.
The picture was first circulated on Twitter on Tuesday by Gissur Simonarson, a Norwegian web designer. “It got 3,000 retweets and people all over the world sent messages saying, ‘How can I help them? I want to buy his pens’,” Mr Simonarson said yesterday.
Within 30 minutes of Mr Simonarson posting a request for information on the unknown Syrian, using the hashtag #BuyPens, a Beirut-based businessman said that he recognised the man from his route to work. Other Lebanese Twitter users found the man and bought him a phone.
His name was Abdul, they learned, and he was a refugee from Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in a besieged Damascus suburb that has seen brutal fighting.
He had been a chocolate maker until the Syrian civil war caused him to flee with his wife and their two children, Reem, 4, and Abdelillah, 9. His wife left the family and divorced him three years ago. The man is among more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees thought to be living in Lebanon, many of them in abject poverty.
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“We decided to set up an Indiegogo [crowd-funding] account but we wanted people we could trust on the ground to deliver the money,” said Mr Simonarson. Within 30 minutes of setting up the fund, it had generated $15,000. By yesterday afternoon the total had surged past $50,000.
Mr Simonarson said that he was in contact with a local charity — Lebanese for Refugees — so that they could help Abdul to handle the money. Unicef was also involved, he said.
“Abdul is such a lovely man,” said Carol Malouf, the charity’s founder, after visiting his home. “When we said that the fund had raised $50,000, his first reaction was that he wanted to help other Syrians. You feel there is a lot of love between him and his kids. He cooks, he cleans, he is the father and the mother.”
She said that the family lived in grim conditions in a ghetto in the west of the city and made 1,000 Lebanese Lira (43p) for every three pens they sold. Since the publicity attracted by the fund, Abdul had suffered some harassment, she added, declining to reveal the family’s precise whereabouts. “We are working to protect him,” she said.
Mr Simonarson acknowledged that the unexpected success of the fund had brought with it unforeseen problems. “We thought we might raise a few thousand dollars and it would be not too big a deal. Now it is a global story. We are trying to act responsibly so that this doesn’t get him in a worse situation.”
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He said that the photographer who took the picture and uploaded it to the web remained unknown. “This is a single powerful photograph that speaks to people. Now we have got their attention perhaps we can run another campaign to help more people than just one,” Mr Simonarson said.