给孤儿院捐款错了吗

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.

作家J?K?罗琳(JK Rowling)不久前现身纽约，她带着两个任务。第一个任务并不出人意料：根据她的小说《神奇动物在哪里》(Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)改编的电影于10月上映，她和主演埃迪?雷德梅因(Eddie Redmayne)来纽约宣传影片。

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.

罗琳的第二个任务不同寻常。几年前，她成立了一个慈善组织Lumos，致力于帮助全球生活在孤儿院的数百万儿童。你可能会猜，她要为这些孤儿院募捐。事实并非如此。她认为，好心的西方人做“慈善”的方式、特别是给孤儿院捐款是大错特错的。

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.

近些年，来自美国和欧洲的援助资金大量涌入印度、巴西、罗马尼亚和海地等国的孤儿院，通常是在媒体大肆报道某起悲惨事件之后。例如，罗琳估计，自从海地遭受一系列自然灾害以来，美国人已向海地孤儿院捐款1亿美元。这听上去很有意义，当然，这些捐款也是出于好心，但罗琳坚持表示，这种做法弊大于利。

Orphanages, she argues, are rarely “good” for children: at best, they leave them bereft of family ties; at worst, they promote abuse, neglect and trafficking. Precisely because orphanages have such a mixed track record, governments in the US and Europe have been shutting them down since the 1950s — preferring to place orphans with foster families instead.

她认为，孤儿院很少是对儿童“有利的”：往轻了说，它们让孩子与家人断了联系；最坏的是它们会助长虐待儿童、对儿童疏于照顾以及人口贩卖行为。正是因为孤儿院这种有利有弊的情况，美国和欧洲国家的政府自上世纪50年代以来一直在关闭孤儿院，倾向于把孤儿交给收养家庭。

But the bitter irony of the aid game today is that even as western governments have been closing orphanages at home, their aid programmes have been encouraging them to flourish in developing countries. Indeed, the more aid that flows into “poor” orphanages, the bigger they become — partly because an entire ecosystem is now directing vulnerable children there. In Cambodia, for example, the population of orphanages jumped 75 per cent between 2005 and 2011 as donor money poured in, according to a UN report. In Haiti, the increase has been even more dramatic, with numbers living in orphanages rising sevenfold, to 32,000.

然而，如今有关援助行为的一大讽刺是在西方政府关闭本国的孤儿院时，它们的援助计划却在鼓励孤儿院在发展中国家蓬勃发展。实际上，流入“贫困”孤儿院的援助资金越多，这类孤儿院的规模就变得越大，部分原因是整个体系正将处境悲惨的儿童引导向孤儿院。例如，在柬埔寨，根据联合国(UN)的一份报告，随着捐赠资金的涌入，2005年至2011年孤儿数量大增75%。在海地，增幅更为明显，孤儿院的孤儿数量增长了7倍，达到3.2万人。

And the really cruel rub is that many of the eight million children currently living in orphanages are not true orphans at all: studies by Save the Children suggest that about 80 per cent have a living parent. Instead, they are being pushed into institutions because their families are desperately poor — and because the explosion of the aid “business” has created a momentum (and false incentives) all of its own.

真正残酷的是，在如今生活在孤儿院里的800万名儿童中，有很多根本不是真正的孤儿。拯救儿童组织(Save the Children)的研究显示，约80%是至少有一方父母在世的。他们被塞进孤儿院的一部分原因是他们的家庭非常贫困，同时援助“事业”的爆炸性发展也起到了推动作用（提供了错误的激励）。

“Americans are amazingly generous,” Rowling told a crowd of wealthy New Yorkers, at the premiere of her film at Carnegie Hall. “But please don’t give money to orphanages?.?.?.?and don’t go and volunteer to work at one.” Instead, she wants donations to “community-based” initiatives that help poor families to keep their children or find foster families.

罗琳在她的电影在卡内基音乐厅(Carnegie Hall)的首映式上告诉在场的纽约富人们：“美国人非常慷慨。但请不要捐钱给孤儿院了……不要去孤儿院做志愿工作了。”她希望人们捐款给一些“以社区为基础”(community-based)的公益计划，这些计划帮助贫困家庭养育自己的孩子或找到收养家庭。

Can this work? Not easily — or rapidly, alas. One reason why western aid has flooded into orphanages in recent years is that these institutions can be monitored. Giving to a “community” is more opaque and diffuse. And the sad reality is that even if all orphanages were closed tomorrow, life would still be grim for many poor children; street life is hellish in places such as India or Brazil.

这有用吗？唉，不容易，也不会很快见效。近年西方援助资金大量涌入孤儿院的一个原因是孤儿院可以被监督。捐款给“社区”则不透明且分散。一个令人遗憾的事实是即便所有的孤儿院明天都关闭，对于很多贫困孩子来说，生活仍然是灰暗的；在印度或巴西等国，流浪街头是很可怕的。

But Lumos is making some progress: it estimates that $500m of donor funds has already been redirected away from orphanages. And, if nothing else, Rowling deserves credit for using her pulpit — and Potter fame — to change attitudes.

不过Lumos正在取得一些进展：该组织估计，有5亿美元资金的捐赠对象已从孤儿院转向别处。而且，抛开别的不说，罗琳利用她的讲台——以及哈利?波特(Potter)的名声——改变人们的态度也是值得称道的。

Indeed, I would argue the lesson needs to be broadened. These days, most Americans take it for granted that philanthropy is a good thing, since giving is baked into popular American culture (and encouraged with tax breaks). But, as with the orphanage issue, there are a host of studies emerging that show how aid can distort economies or concentrate power in the hands of an elite.

实际上，我认为孤儿院这种事上的教训适用于更大的范围。如今多数美国人想当然地认为，慈善是好事，因为捐赠已融入美国大众文化（并得到税收优惠的鼓励）。然而，就如孤儿院问题一样，现在有很多研究显示，援助可能会扭曲经济或导致权力集中到精英手中。

Don’t get me wrong: I am not trying to stop generosity or philanthropy. But what is needed is a clear evaluation — and debate — about the cost and benefits of the aid business and its current structure. That is hard to do since the topic tends to be so emotive and guilt-laden. But if anyone can succeed, it is Rowling — the woman who taught the world to become passionate about a wizarding orphan but who is now trying to consign orphanages to fairy tales.

不要误会我的意思：我并不是要阻止乐善好施之举。但我们需要对援助事业的成本和效益及其目前的结构进行清晰的评估并展开相关辩论。这很难，因为这个话题往往带有很强的感情色彩而且让人心怀内疚。但如果有人能做到的话，那就是罗琳，她教世人去喜欢一个会魔法的孤儿，她现在正试图将孤儿院封存在童话故事中。