ANJAR, Lebanon — Images of wounded children and displaced families continue to emerge across the Middle East and along the shores of Europe, as the ongoing Mosul offensive has left more than 10,000 Iraqis in refugee camps for the displaced and the Syrian crisis continues to push masses of people to a stateless condition.

Syrians continue to escape war-torn cities and villages that are bearers of daily attacks carried out by a cadre of adversaries that include the Bashar al-Assad regime and its allies, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), terror groups and mercenary forces. As host countries like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon continue to struggle with assimilating and supporting the large influx of refugees, a group of young Syrian refugee professionals in Lebanon are striving to break the burdensome stereotypes of refugees.

“Many of the refugees you see here in Lebanon wanted to stay in Syria, but had no choice,” Dr. Fadi al-Halabi, a Syrian refugee who fled his hometown of Damascus to Lebanon in 2013, told Al-Monitor. He was completing his last year of residency as a neurosurgeon back home, and is currently the general director of Multi Aid Programs (MAPS), a grass-roots organization in Lebanon founded by Halabi and fellow Syrian refugees through the support of a virtual Lebanese board.

Since its establishment in 2013, MAPS has provided various medical and educational services to some 300,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon and has served vulnerable members of the Lebanese host community.