The #BuyPens story
On the 26th of August this year, Icelandic twitterer @GissiSim Gissur Simonarson an activist and founder of Conflicts an online forum for breaking news in conflict areas around the world, posted a picture of a Syrian man clutching at pens and trying to sell them on the streets of Beirut. As is said a picture says a thousand words and this picture certainly shook emotion right into thousands of twitter users worldwide within an instant. The picture seemed to sum up to most the desperation that Syrian refugees face throughout the Middle East and Europe.
At the time no one knew who this Syrian man was, but quite quickly a groundswell of people started to wanted to find out who this man is and try and help him and his daughter in some way.
Through quick networking online a search quickly found out that the man is Abdul Halim Attar a 35 Palestinian Syrian refugee who had fled his homeland with his family and has been living in Beirut for the last 3 years. To try and survive Abdul has been selling biros on the streets to try and feed his young family of him, his daughter and son.
An outpouring of goodwill then took place through the guidance of the original tweeter Gissur. He swiftly set up a crowd funding campaign named #BuyPens to try and raise fund to give to Abdul and his young family. The campaign was a major success.
What this story really demonstrates is the power and efficiency of social media and social media networks. From posting a photo online to asking people to find out who the Syrian man was, to setting up an online fundraising campaign to successfully raising large amounts of funds to help him shows that if harnessed correctly and with moral intent social media can be used indeed for social good and human right's awareness.
The upside to this story is that Abdul will be able to as he states send his children to school and to also help out other Syrian refugees who are currently stuck in places like Lebanon.