On Saturday 9th November 2013 J.K. Rowling was the host at a special family fundraising evening in aid of her children’s charity Lumos, at Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter, which raised over £1 million.
The Studio Tour was made exclusively available by Warner Bros. for the special event. Guests were invited, with their children, to join J.K. Rowling and celebrity guests, to enjoy a visit to the Studio Tour, followed by a dinner and charity auction for the adults in the Hogwarts Great Hall. Younger guests were entertained by magicians, entertainers and the animal actors from the Harry Potter films.
The evening raised much needed funds for specific projects that Lumos runs in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova – all with the aim of helping to reunite children with their families or into family-based care, reforming the care system and developing community-based and specialist services for future generations of disadvantaged children.
J.K. Rowling said:
“Since setting up the charity eight years ago to help change the lives of so many children living unnecessarily in appalling institutions across the world, Lumos has already helped governments to take nearly 12,000 children out of these institutions. We have prevented the deaths of more than 400 extremely vulnerable children with disabilities, who were not receiving the care they needed in institutions. We have helped the EU change its rules on how it uses money to reform health, education and social services – and we are just beginning. There is so much more we need to do to bring an end to the institutionalisation of children.
The incredible support we have received tonight will directly go towards helping achieve all this.”