Gap year efforts harm children warns Rowling

GAP year students who volunteer at orphanages overseas are propping up a system that “irreparably harms children”, JK Rowling has said.

The author, who founded children’s welfare charity Lumos, said that while students may have the “best of intentions”, they could be funding orphanages that abuse vulnerable children and sell them into sex work.

Ms Rowling encouraged students to instead spend time teaching in community schools abroad.

“Young people from the West often think the thing to do on their gap year is to volunteer in an orphanage,” she told Today on BBC Radio 4. “They may not realise it, but they are driving a system that irreparably harms children.”

Volunteers can be charged as much as £200 per week to care for children.

But Ms Rowling said abusive orphanages sometimes trafficked malnourished children around institutions to encourage wealthy donors to send money, or sexually abused children.

Georgette Mulheir, Lumos chief executive, told The Sunday Telegraph that in some institutions, up to 80 per cent of children had parents who were alive.