It’s my last day with Khouloud and Jamal and I’m struggling with a decision. Whenever possible I like to take a print back to give to those I’ve documented, and in my bag I have a photograph I took of the couple two years before. But should I give it to them?

In the picture Khouloud, paralysed from the neck down, lies in the tent she shares with her family in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. Jamal sits at the end of her bed, holding her hand, the couple looking at each other with a love that is at odds with the stark, grainy black-and-white image that reflects the truth of their desperate situation.

If there is one image that betrays my belief in the power of photography to create change, it’s this one. For here we are, two years later, sitting in that same dark oppressive tent and nothing has changed. Naively perhaps, I’d believed that telling Khouloud’s story would have made a difference, and I can’t help feeling I failed them.

Finally, I reach down and take the photograph out of my bag.

As I hand it to them I say: “When I took this two years ago, I didn’t take a photograph of a refugee, I didn’t take a photograph of a disabled woman; instead I took a photograph of a couple who are deeply in love, and that’s what this will always mean to me.”

In 2014 I went to Lebanon with Handicap International to document some of Syria’s most vulnerable refugees. The sick, the elderly, single-parent families and those living with disabilities. People like 38-year-old Reem. She was in bed at home in Idlib, Syria, when a rocket hit her house. Her husband was killed next to her, one of her children also died, and Reem lost a leg. When I met her she was living in a tent on the top floor of an unfinished building. She was still learning to use her prosthesis and was unable to use the stairs, leaving her trapped. She didn’t want her surviving children to live with her – she felt ashamed because she believed her disability meant she couldn’t be a mother to them.

Only her father, Abdel, lived with her on the rooftop. As I was taking his photograph, Abdel kept looking to the side, his eyes focused on the distant snow-capped mountains. I asked why he kept looking that way.

Tripoli, Lebanon, 2016: ‘Aya hugs her father, Ayman. The family had moved from a tent in Idlib to this rented room, but life was still a constant struggle.’ Photograph: Giles Duley/UNHCR

“Those mountains,” he replied, “are my home. I am an old man and may never return home, but at least each morning it’s the first thing I see, and when I go to bed the last.”

Over the following weeks I met dozens of Syrians like Reem, fighting for survival and dignity as refugees in Lebanon. In 2014 the situation was already desperate, with over a million Syrians sheltering in a county of just four million. The infrastructure was close to collapse.

Recovering from a life-changing accident myself (in 2011 I was injured while working in Afghanistan), that trip to Lebanon and the people I met were to have a profound effect both on my life and my work. But it was in meeting Khouloud – and, later, a girl called Aya – that I would find true inspiration and a renewed purpose for my photography

In 2013 Khouloud, 32, was working in her garden with her children when a sniper shot her through the spine. She collapsed, paralysed from the neck down. “I tried to plant a small area of land near our house as it wasn’t possible to get vegetables like before,” she said. “I was taking care of the plants with my four children and suddenly a bullet hit my neck and I fell down and lost sensation. I could not move any more.”

After her initial treatment her family managed to get her out of Syria. Eventually they found themselves living in an informal tented settlement in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, one of thousands of unofficial camps dotted across the country. When we met she’d been there for five months.

The UNHCR was providing food coupons but the family was struggling. Her husband has to provide Khouloud with 24-hour care. I asked her: “What’s your hope for the future?” “To be a mother again,” she replied. “I wish I could move my fingers because sometimes my son is injured outside and he comes in next to me. He moves my hand and he puts my fingers on to the wound. I wish I could move my fingers to touch him and make him feel like I am feeling the wound with him.”

What struck me was the love within that family. Despite everything they had been through and the incredible suffering they still endured, there was laughter, hope and affection. They treated me like a family member. Despite having so little, they cooked and shared what they had.

Lebanon, 2014: ‘This is Khouloud and Jamal in the photograph I took in their tent in Bekaa valley, Lebanon, when I first met them.’ Photograph: Giles Duley/Handicap International

When I met Aya she was sitting alone on a concrete floor in a dark, damp tent. She has spina bifida, which means she is paralysed from the waist down and the curvature in her spin makes it hard to sit upright unaided. She was four years old. Seeing her there, I thought I couldn’t take her photograph. She seemed so vulnerable, and that goes against the way I like to work. Yet Aya was to prove me wrong. She turned out to be the feistiest four-year-old I’d ever met.

I spent the day with her family, and her mother, Sihan, told me about Aya’s relationship with her sister, Iman. The two were inseparable. When their house in Idlib was bombed, it was Iman, only 10 herself, who held Aya in the basement where they sheltered for three days. With no food or water, she never let her sister go. Then, on the perilous journey from Syria to Lebanon, which took them several weeks, it was Iman who carried Aya.

Iman walked into the tent while we were talking, and I expected to see that tenderness. Instead, Aya looked up at her sister and exclaimed “Pick me up, Donkey!”

Over the coming weeks I revisited them and – as with Khouloud and her family – witnessed the strength of their love and unity. One of the hardest things was listening to Aya’s father, Ayman, talking about the possibility of splitting his family up. Things were so desperate: living in a makeshift tent, the children often sick, he not allowed to work because of his refugee status, the family sinking further and further into debt, and Aya not getting the medical support she desperately needed. The other children weren’t attending school and Ayman was considering sending them to live with others.

Their most immediate concern was whether Aya would survive the winter. On my last day there, as the family attempted to winter-proof their tent with materials supplied by the UNHCR, Sihan was in tears as she told me that she doubted Aya could survive these hardships. But Aya had other thoughts. She interrupted her mother to exclaim with typical defiance: “Aya doesn’t die!”

In the end I did take a photograph of Aya. It was of her playing hopscotch with Iman. She is laughing, and in that moment you see her strength and passion for life.

Laval, France, 2016: ‘Aya with her mother, Sihan, in France. For the first time in years, Sihan was able to tell Aya: “It’s OK, this is your home now.”’ Photograph: Giles Duley /UNHCR

After returning home I often thought of the families I’d met. Some I managed to stay in contact with. Others, I had no idea of their fate. Then, in 2015, the UNHCR commissioned me to document the refugee crisis across Europe and the Middle East. Its brief was simple: “Follow your heart.”

The project began in Lesbos, documenting scenes we are all too familiar with. I followed the refugees’ journey to Berlin, criss-crossing Europe, trying to record stories. However, I knew that if I was to fully fulfil my brief and follow my heart, I’d have to return to Lebanon.

So in February 2016 I went back.

I visited Aya and her family. They had moved out of the tent and, thanks to assistance from the UNHCR, were now living in a rented room on the outskirts of Tripoli. It wasn’t much, but at least it provided proper shelter, and the children seemed much healthier.

Aya was her normal feisty self and had grown up so much. Her new hobby was painting her nails and trying out hairstyles. I photographed her being pushed around in her wheelchair by her brothers, screaming “Faster! Faster!” I have some understanding of the pain that she is in each day and her struggles with disability – yet I have never heard her complain.

Life was still hard. What support the family received barely covered rent and food. While the kids could attend school, often they missed classes because the family could not pay the bus fare. Ayman still wasn’t allowed to work.

Many days were spent sitting around the house. The family, like most refugees, were stuck in limbo.

When I first met Aya’s family they talked of returning to Syria as soon as possible. After over five years of war, they were now questioning if they could ever return. And even if they did, what would be left? The schools, hospitals and businesses lie in ruins; their own house is destroyed. What future would they have?

With the prospects of a return to Syria dwindling and life in Lebanon impossible, their hope now was for resettlement. “I never wanted to go to Europe, so far from Syria,” Ayman said, “but if this gives my children a chance of a future, then I will go.”

They had been put forward by the UNHCR for resettlement in France, but months had passed and still no news. They were losing hope.

I also returned to see Reem. I was happy to see she was now able to negotiate the stairs, and her daughter, Sarah, was living with her again. That evening I sat with the family (Reem’s two brothers had joined her, living on the roof-top), drinking coffee and eating homemade bread from the open fire. In so many ways, life was normal. The family joked and laughed, reminisced about life back in Syria, discussed food and football. But for the refugees living in Lebanon, nothing is normal. Like Aya’s family they were stuck, unable to build new lives or plan futures.

I managed to track down most of those I’d met on my first visit, but in the chaos it was hard to trace everyone. On my last day I got a phone call. It was Khouloud’s family. She’d heard I was back and wanted me to visit. When I asked where she was living, I was told she was in the same tent I’d seen her in two years before.

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. How could she still be living in that tent? Of all those I’d visited in 2014, Khouloud’s situation had seemed the most desperate. A tetraplegic woman living in a makeshift tent with her husband as full-time carer. I’d told her story and yet nothing had changed. I felt as if I had failed them.

I extended my stay in Lebanon and went to see them.

Bekaa valley, Lebanon, 2016: ‘Khouloud helps her youngest daughter, also called Aya, with her homework.’ Photograph: Giles Duley/UNHCR

For over two years Khouloud had not moved from her bed, staring at the ceiling of the one room that they lived in. Yet still she remained positive; full of laughter and knowing smiles. Jamal still looked at her with, he said, all the love he had when they first met. The children do their homework on the bed with their mother, and they always eat together as a family. Astonishingly, the tent was a place filled with positivity, laughter and kindness.

Over the days that followed I tried to capture that story through my photographs, I wanted to tell their story again. On the last day I gave them that photograph I’d taken two years before – with the promise that this time I’d make sure people heard their story.

Just a few months later, in August 2016, I was in San Francisco, giving a talk. The idea was to raise funds and awareness of the crisis in Lebanon. After the talk I received an email from Philip Schneider, who manages the global community event Gishwhes and is also on the board of a charity called Random Acts. Set up by American actor Misha Collins in 2010, Random Acts has a simple mission statement: “Conquer the world, one random act of kindness at a time.”

Key to its work is a network of connected people who use social media to raise awareness and help individuals and communities. After seeing the photographs and hearing the stories of Aya and Khouloud at the talk, Schneider was so moved that he wanted to combine the Gishwhes and Random Acts networks to see what could be done to help.

Things moved fast. They set up a crowdfunding page, and the combined online communities started donating and spreading the word. “In situations like these, it’s hard to know how one can help,” wrote Schneider on their website, “but Gishwhes and Random Acts have decided that while we may not be able to solve Syria’s problems, making some small impact is better than standing idly by, doing nothing. Therefore, we have narrowed the scope and we are going to radically change the material situation of a few families that have suffered tremendously from this conflict.”

Laval, France, 2016: ‘Aya laughs with her family, days after arriving in France. I realised this was the first time I had seen the family laugh.’ Photograph: Giles Duley/UNHCR

In the days and weeks that followed, I sat glued to their fundraiser page. From over 20 countries, hundreds of people donated, often just 10 or 20 dollars. But the impact of so many people coming together to create change was dramatic. Within a month, over $200,000 was raised. Random Acts is now in the process of moving Khouloud and other families in Lebanon into flats, getting them medical treatment and making sure a trust is set up so the children can attend school until they are 18.

No matter what your political persuasion, it can’t be denied that, in 2016, compassion, tolerance and empathy took a beating. But this generosity and compassion is inspiring. The issues of the world can seem overwhelming but – even if just for a few families – this proves that the kindness of strangers can change lives.

Around the same time I received further good news: as part of UNHCR’s resettlement scheme, Aya and her family were to start a new life in France. They’d be leaving Lebanon in less than two weeks. Sihan, Aya’s mother, fretted about what they should take. They were allowed a suitcase each, and into those she packed blankets (for she had been told it was cold) and bags of dried thyme, cumin and Arabic coffee (she wanted to carry a taste of home).

None of them had flown before. When they boarded the plane in Beirut the family was terrified. Apart from Aya, who, I’m told, did up her seat belt and said “Let’s go!”

A few days later I visited them at their new home in Laval, an hour’s drive from Paris. Their flat is in a new block on the edge of a small town. It’s quiet, with gardens where the children can play. Random Acts helped provide Aya with a state-of-the-art wheelchair, and for the first time in her life she can fulfil her dream of attending school.

Eating dinner with the family, I realised, that despite knowing them for over two years, it was the first time I’d seen Aya’s parents smile. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from them. As I was leaving, Sihan told me with tears in her eyes, about the first night they slept in their new flat. Aya often struggles to sleep, but on that night, as she put Aya to bed, Sihan was able to whisper to her: “It’s OK, this is your home now.”