JK Rowling, British author and founder of the charity Lumos, has given an interview urging young people not to volunteer in orphanages during their gap year, according to this article from the Telegraph.
“Young people from the West, with the best intentions I have to say, often think the thing to do on their gap year is to go and volunteer in an orphanage,” she said. “They may not realise it, but they are driving what is sometimes a lucrative business model, they are keeping the institution open as a magnet for funding or private donations, they are driving a system that we know from eighty sound years of research irreparably harms children.”