'Don't give your money to orphanages' Harry Potter writer tells fans
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has urged fans not to give money to orphanages following a Facebook live chat publicising the plight of the eight million children around the world who are living in them.
The writer of the hit children’s series took part in a Facebook Live chat for her charity Lumos, which was chaired by broadcaster Lauren Laverne.
Rowling, who founded the non-profit organisation 10 years ago, explained: “All of the research agrees that there’s little you can do worse for a child than put it in an institution.”
She said of people donating money to overseas orphanages: “We want to help children and that’s an honourable and admirable thing.
"However, you may be contributing towards real harm.
“If you take nothing else away tonight, I’d like you to remember this is a solvable problem. Eight million children is an unfathomably large number – it’s so hard to really take in what that means, eight million – but we can solve it.
"We absolutely do need funds but we need to change minds. And if we change minds we will change lives.”
Asked by Lauren how she managed to keep up with a hectic publishing schedule that also includes work under the name Robert Galbraith, as well as the recently-launched West End show Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, she said: “I have a very supportive family and I never answer emails.
“I find it makes life a lot easier if you just forget a lot of stuff you’re supposed to be doing. I tend to prioritise my writing and my children.
"Children normally come first depending on how they’re behaving.”
The well-known author went on to say that “2016 is very wizardy" and added that she would never "entirely" be able to separate from Harry Potter.
