Beirut : An online fundraiser has raised more than $100,000 for a refugee from Syria and his daughter after sharing moving pictures of the man selling pens in the streets of Beirut, media reported on Saturday.
Gissur Simonarson, founder of Conflict News, posted the pictures on Tuesday and was flooded with requests to help the man, a Palestinian from the devastated Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, Daily Mail reports.
The touching pictures showed Abdul, a single father of two, holding up pens on a roadside on the southern outskirts of Damascus while holding his sleeping four-year-old daughter, Reem.
Abdul is from the Yarmouk Camp in Syria, which has been torn apart by fighting after the brutal Islamic State terrorist group invaded and began reducing the city to rubble.
The pictures were taken in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, where more than a million refugees have fled to escape fighting in their cities.
Forced to leave their homes and lives behind, many do anything that they can to make enough money to feed their families and Abdul found himself trying to sell pens to survive.
Young refugee children sell flowers, packs of tissues or offer to shine shoes for a small sum.
Pictures of the devoted father, desperate to send his children to school, struck a chord with people all over the world and donations came flooding in.
The campaign collected $117,000 within 24 hours according to the report.
“It’s nice to see people come together and make a difference in another person’s life,” Simonarson wrote.
While the money was raised for Abdul, he said he wanted to use it to help fellow Syrian’s facing the same struggle.