Joanne “J.K” Rowling, activist and author, is making an effort to close all orphanages around the world. Rowling wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian on Thursday that orphanages, which host more than 8 million children globally, should be closed and the children should be sent to their parents or other families.

Rowling stated that most children in orphanages are not actually orphans; they have been removed from their parents, sometimes in cases of poverty. She wrote that the idea of children being taken from families and being “locked away” is “particularly poignant” this time of the year. She compared children in these institutions to the “darkest of Grimms’ fairytales.”

CEO of Lumos Georgette Mulheir, who has worked with “vulnerable children and their families” and advised governments on the reform of child services in many countries for over 20 years, said that she witnessed horrible conditions mirroring dark fairytales one Christmas she took treats to an institution with 270 children. It was minus 25 degrees and the children were wrapped in blankets shivering in a building with a broken heater, according to Rowling.

In 2005, Rowling founded the NGO Lumos to raise awareness about institutions hosting orphans and other children and to help children regain their rights to a family. She borrowed the name for the organization from a spell that creates light for “dark and frightening places” in her Harry Potter series. Rowling explained that part of their work as an organization is to “shed light” on children who have been taken from their homes due to discrimination, poverty and disability.

Rowling wrote in The Guardian that she was inspired to start the organization after seeing a shocking black-and-white photo of a young boy at an institution locked in a caged bed. It appeared to be chicken wire containing the young boy. Rowling felt an overwhelming need to help those children without voices who were forced into these institutions. She said there would “be no Lumos” had it not been for this photo she saw in the newspaper.

The organization has already made huge strides in reducing the amount of children in orphanages. For instance, the organization has aided in reducing the number of children in Bulgarian orphanages by 54 percent. As a result, the number of foster care parents has increased tremendously. They have also reduced the institutionalization of children in Moldova by 70 percent and by 75 percent in the Czech Republic.

Rowling says that reducing the number of institutions to zero is possible by 2050. Recently, she has committed to becoming the president of Lumos for the rest of her life. She says her dream, within her lifetime, is that “the very concept of taking a child away from its family and locking it away will seem to belong to a cruel, fictional world.”

Rowling explained that people are “aghast and disbelieving” when she recites the field’s statistics. People always ask how this could have happened. She claims that the reason so many children have ended up in institutions is because children are easy to “silence,” particularly children with physical or mental disabilities.