Some stories need to be told. These stories often teach people moral virtues that can help them gain perspective. Even in times when all hope is lost, we can uses these stories as a reference point, and hope that despite the overwhelming challenges confronting us, everything will be alright.
33-year-old Abdul Halim Al-Attar, fled the civil war in Syria more than three years ago. He first moved to Egypt, and then to Lebanon.
His wife returned to Syria just months after their departure to Lebanon, but Al-Attar resisted. He told his wife he did not want to go back to a place where there is no future for their children. Al-Attar and his wife have a nine-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter.
Despite the challenges, Al-Attar decided to stay in a refugee camp in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. With minimal support from the refugee camp, Al-Attar decided to think outside the box and do something that would allow him to financially support himself and his family. He settled on selling pens as a hawker on the street.
Day after day, Al-Attar relied on selling the pens, peddling them to motorists and pedestrians who might be interested. At the time, he was receiving the equivalent of $36 a month from the UN Refugee Agency. By supplementing the money he received from the UN Refugee Agency with his painstaking job as a pen seller, he was able to move out of the refugee camp and rent a small apartment. That was his first step. However, he was still unable to send his children to school.
Then one day, while he was on the street conducting his business with his little daughter on his shoulders, a passing photographer captured him in a still photo. It appears the photographer had been secretly watching him before finally deciding to snap and share his story.
The photographer uploaded the photo on a social media platform. The photo immediately went viral. It became the main topic of conversation on many platforms online. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, one of those eager sharers was a man called Gissur Simonarson, a Norway-based developer who runs a website that monitors news events in conflict areas.
Simonarson tweeted Al-Attar’s photo from the site’s account, which has more than 100,000 followers, and he immediately received responses from people who wanted to help. The photo had compelled Simonarson to act because he is a young father himself.
“Seeing him there with his daughter, how hard it was to support her – it’s heartbreaking to see that,” Simonarson told the Washington Post in a phone interview.
Soon after he saw the photo of Al-Attar, Simonarson thought of a way to use his social media following for good. First, he verified through followers in Lebanon that the man in the photo really existed. Once the story was confirmed, he launched an Indiegogo campaign with the goal of raising $5,000 for Al-Attar.
But unknown to Simonarson, that small thought soon became much larger. Within a couple of hours, people had donated $15,000. And by the end of the 15-day period set for the campaign, he had raised $188,685 from more than 7000 contributors who were also moved by the photo.
Meanwhile, Al-Attar did not know what was going on. Simonarson said “He was very nervous, because people were approaching him on the streets and he didn’t know what was happening.”
Simonarson and his team, including a Lebanon-based aid worker, served as a point of contact to Al-Attar. However, they were worried that Al-Attar and his family’s safety would be compromised once people found out about the success of the fundraising. Simonarson and his team worked with the UN Refugee Agency to make sure the family was safe.
After a few late contributions, Simonarson and his team finally reached Al-Attar in Lebanon. They gave him an amount of $191,000.
This life changing moment allowed Al-Attar to leave his pens behind. He now owns three businesses, a small bakery, kebab shop, and a restaurant.
The Associated Press reports that he has been able to move into a larger apartment, and his children are now in school. He is also earning a steady income from selling fresh bread and food to local working-class families.
There are about 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, many of which are unemployed. But for Al-Attah, he has moved from grass to grace thanks to the photographer and Simonarson.
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