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J K Rowling
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One Parent Families is delighted to have JK Rowling as our President. She has supported the charity since 2000, when she became our first ambassador.
On being made President, Jo commented: 'I am truly honoured to be made President of One Parent Families, whom I have supported for the last four years. It is gratifying to be a part of a charity which works so hard to support single parents at ground level, while giving them a voice in the national arena.'
It is hard to overestimate the impact J K Rowling has had, as our first Ambassador, then President. She is a powerful advocate for all parents raising children alone. The speeches she has given at our public events and the articles she has written for the big-selling newspapers have struck a chord with many single parents nationwide. Many recognise the raw poverty she has described. But, more importantly perhaps, among single parents Jo has generated a sense of pride.
She has challenged prejudicial assumptions about one-parent families - offering millions of people new ideas about who single parents are, and how they came to be parenting alone. She has helped us bring about a real change in public attitudes.
Jo doesn't just talk about making changes. She has also made very generous donations to One Parent Families. She is generous too with her time, and has spent days getting to know the charity's staff and members, getting to grips with the issues, and working behind the scenes on our behalf. And those who have met her say how 'down to Earth' she is.
Jo is always keen to stress that she is just one supporter of the charity. She judges her contribution as President by how many other lone-parent members, donors, and Ambassadors it encourages to support the charity's work.
As one of the best-selling writers of all time, we're very lucky that Jo has penned several pieces for One Parent Families, including the forewords to our Social Fund report, Lump Sums and to Families Just Like Us, our good book guide. She produced an impassioned piece for the Sunday Times, backing our campaigning work for lone parent students and wrote the introductions to Magic, and Summer Magic, two collections of short stories put together by our supporters Sarah Brown, the Chancellor's wife, and author Gil McNeil.
We teamed up with the Daily Mirror to promote Magic and thanks to Jo's support, we used the opportunity for some of our members to tell their stories of what life as a lone parent has meant for them.
As many will know from reading the newspapers, Jo is no longer a lone parent, having married Dr Neil Murray, and they've been blessed with a baby boy. Unsurprisingly, none of this has dimmed Jo's support for One Parent Families.
As Jo wrote in The Sun: 'Six out of ten British families headed by a single parent are living in poverty. They are trying to make the money last until the end of the week, making the same desperate telephone calls that I used to make,
wondering why there are so many obstacles in their path when all they are trying to do is provide as well for their children as they can.'
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