Authors Are Raising A Ton Of Money For Refugees

In the face of all the horrible news emerging from Europe, the book world brings a small beacon of hope: across the world, some amazing authors are raising money to help child refugees. On Thursday morning, author Patrick Ness set up a Virgin Money Giving page to raise money for charity organization Save The Children, pledging to match all public donations up to £10,000 (which is roughly $15,000). Within two hours, that goal had been well and truly smashed.

Over the next few hours, more and more authors lined up to pledge massive donations of their own. The fantastic John Green promised to match the next £10,000 — and as it became obvious the donations weren’t slowing down anytime soon, authors Derek Landy and Jojo Moyes stepped up for a further £10,000 each, as well as a group of anonymous American YA writers who teamed up to match yet another £10,000. Oh yeah, and John Green got his brother Hank involved, too — so that’s another casual £10,000. Still keeping track? At the time of publication, the total donations had reached over £100,000 and were still climbing fast — that’s nearly $153,000!

As Patrick Ness looks for his next celebrity donor, people are sending a lot of tweets in the direction of a certain famously charitable author...

Although J.K. Rowling has yet to comment on this, she’s certainly shown her support for the people seeking refuge in Europe, by joining in with the popular hashtag #refugeeswelcome. Rowling’s boundless charity is notorious, so even if she doesn’t join this particular cause, you just know she’ll help out however she sees fit.

And it doesn’t stop there. Icelandic author Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir set up a Facebook group to show support for asylum seekers, prompting more than 11,000 Icelandic families to offer up their own homes to people in need.

It’s been amazing watching some of the world’s best authors team together for such an important cause. The newspapers are opening our eyes to some horrifically sad images, but Patrick Ness’s fundraising efforts and the incredible display of generosity that followed shows that human kindness is not so hard to find after all.