Refugee used crowdfunded money to open three businesses

One Syrian refugee has gone from selling pens on the street in Beirut while carrying his sleeping daughter to owning three small businesses, all in a matter of months.

After Abdul Halim Al-Attar's story went viral with the social media hashtag 'buy pens' he has raised nearly $200,000 on a crowdfunding site.

So far Al-Attar, 33, has only seen about 40% of the money that he raised because PayPal does not operate in Lebanon which is where he is currently living.

But still the father of two has managed to open a bakery, a kebab shop and even a small restaurant.

Abdul Halim Al-Attar also employs 16 other refugees and has given $25,000 of the money he raised to his friends and family.

He said: "Not only did my life change, but also the lives of my children and the lives of people in Syria whom I helped."

According to Metro, the crowdfunding page was started by Gissur Simonarson who is the founder of Conflict News. Simonarson also started the Twitter page, @buy_pens, in the hopes of bringing light to Abdul's story and to help him and his family out a little.

The original goal for the page was just $5000 but the final tally after three months was almost forty times that.

Speaking to Mashable, Simonarson said: "Seeing that he opened a restaurant and his kids look well taken care of, I'm really happy."

But there are also aspects of the campaign that he's not happy with, including the difficulties they've had accessing the money for Abdul.

He said: "after seeing how difficult the disbursement has been, and complications with refugees not being able to open a bank account in Lebanon. I think that will be my last fundraiser."

You can follow Abdul and his family's story on the Twitter page @buy_pens.