Last week, the author JK Rowling was in New York on a two-pronged mission. The first part of her crusade was unsurprising: the movie based on her book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens this month and she and lead actor Eddie Redmayne were in town to promote it.
The second part of Rowling’s sales mission had an unusual twist. Some years ago, the writer set up a charity, Lumos, to fight for the millions of children across the world living in orphanages. And while you might have thought she would be campaigning for funds for these institutions, that is not the case. Instead, Rowling believes that something has gone badly wrong with the way that well-meaning westerners do “charity” — and, in particular, give money to orphanages.
In recent years, aid money has flooded from the US and Europe into orphanages in places such as India, Brazil, Romania and Haiti, often following tragic events highlighted in the media. Rowling estimates, for example, that Americans have given $100m to Haitian orphanages alone since the country was hit by a series of natural disasters. This sounds worthy, and, of course, donations are made with the best of intentions but Rowling insists that they are doing more harm than good.