An online donation campaign has crowd-funded $130,000 for a Palestinian refugee from Syria who was spotted selling pens, with his sleeping daughter hung over his shoulder in the streets of Lebanon’s Beirut.
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“He is over the moon,” activist Gissur Simonarson, who launched the campaign, told the Mirror.
"He just kept saying praise Allah for what you are doing. He's very excited about the whole campaign."
The Icelandic journalist, Simonarson, spearheaded the "Help Abdul and Reem start a new life" campaign last Thursday, August 27, to help one of 1.1 million Syrian refugees who fled to Lebanon.
A poignant picture of Palestinian-Syrian refugee Abdul Halim Attar selling pens in Beirut went viral on social media, triggering request to help the desperate man.
Simonarson launched a Twitter hashtag named #BuyPens to track the single father who has fled Syria with his nine-year-old son Abdelillah and four-year-old daughter Reem three years ago.
"Gotten a lot of requests to help this man and his daughter. Anyone know people in Beirut able to locate him? #BuyPens,” the activist wrote, CBC reported.
Surpassing its initial goal of collecting $5,000, the campaign drew 1,721 people who donated a total of $50,612 (£32,881) in less than 24 hours.
"I am humbled and overwhelmed by the outpouring of support. It's just great to see a positive refugee story on the news once, since most of them are fairly terrible,” Simonarson said.
In its’ first 30 minutes, the campaign achieved its target goal of $5,000 (£3,200).
"We have reached my goal of $5,000 in the first 30 min,” Simonarson wrote.
"This was never meant as a cap, just something to start with. Let's make sure that Abdul and Reem can really start a great new life.”
Speaking about the way of delivering funds to the Palestinian refugee, the activist said that the campaign will liaise with the UNICEF to provide a monthly payment for the dedicated father.
After being contacted by the activist, the grateful father told BuzzFeed News during an interview Friday:
"I was surprised to know that people abroad heard about my story and care about my kids.
"I couldn't hold my tears. I kept saying, 'Thank God, thank God,' and hugging my kids.
"I want to help other Syrians," he added.
Meanwhile, Simonarson praised the generous people who reacted immediately to the campaign.
"We have referrals from 191 websites through which people have donated to #BuyPens!," he wrote on Twitter.
"We are now up to 89 countries donating to #BuyPens with Mauritius joining to group yesterday," he added.
More than 190,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict between the Assad regime and opposition forces began in early 2011, according to UN figures published in August 2014.
Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq have taken in more than three million Syrian since the conflict began in 2011, and the refugee crisis has become the worst since World War II.
The number of children displaced inside Syria has risen to nearly 3 million from 920,000 a year ago.
Meanwhile, UNICEF said the number of child refugees has grown to 1.2 million from 260,000 since last year - 425,000 of them under 5 years old.
