He said he hoped the owner of the found wallet had a business and could provide him with a job or housing. “We never know!” said Hadjer Al-Ali, 33, a homeless man who regularly walks around the Amsterdam train station area, in the Netherlands.
On Sunday, he found a lost wallet on a train, containing 2,000 euros but no identity papers. The thirty-year-old preferred to take it to the police rather than take the money. A gesture that earned him a voucher worth 50 euros, offered by the local police, and the hope of being able to pocket the 2,000 euros if no one claims them in the next twelve months.
But Internet users were offended by the meager reward offered to the homeless man. Very quickly, an online prize pool was launched with the objective, which seemed crazy at first, to raise as much money as Hadjer Al-Ali had found, say numerous Dutch media, relayed by the site 20minutes. Fr.
Except that the story of this homeless man moved people well beyond the Dutch borders. And that the prize pool reached, in just over a day, 34,102 euros. An amount which seems to suit the initiator of this collection of donations since it is no longer possible to make a contribution.
On the GoFundMe site, we discover that the recipient of this nice jackpot has been homeless for a year and a half and that he is the father of two children, aged 6 and 5, who live in Apeldoorn, a town about a hundred kilometers east of Amsterdam. We can only hope for this family that the donations received will allow them to live together again.
