Radio Lollipop in Birmingham kicked off this year’s fundraising event in Henley In Arden market. This was a great practice-run for us, with a mixture of new volunteers as well as the longer-standing volunteers! The event included pick-a-ticket, raffle, face-painting, music and a 50p stall. All in all, a good day out was had by all and we are looking forward to the next event at Lee Marston car-boot on 24th May 2009, followed by another car-boot at Bassetts Pole in early June.

Radio Lollipop celebrated 30 years of radio broadcasting on 5 May and kids at the Mater Children’s Hospital joined in the celebrations.

Radio Lollipop Australia Director Sandra Ursino wasn’t about to see the 30 year milestone pass without a celebration. “Here at Radio Lollipop we’ll find any excuse to celebrate and what better way to do that than with a giant Radio Lollipop cake!”

Radio Lollipop’s Terrific Tuesday team joined forces with Miss Lollipop to create a party atmosphere by handing out birthday cake and balloons throughout the wards. In the studio a special ‘party’ themed radio competition was held in-between playing songs requested by kids on the wards. “It’s hard to say who had more fun the kids or the volunteers!” Sandra said.

Check out our Terrific Tuesday team with Miss Lollipop and the amazing cake made by the Mater Children’s Hospital Catering Department.

A huge thank you to everyone involved who made the night such a huge success.

Radio Lollipop Newcastle, this weekend distributed their first 50 welcome packs to wards at Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary.

The “Awards for All” lottery funded welcome packs have been designed to comfort children, provide care and entertain them at times when other issues are out of their control.

Each item in the pack has been chosen specifically to have some sort of therapeutic or entertaining property, easing the burden on hospital play specialists and parents to provide constant entertainment for the children when they are on the wards.

Helen Hudspith, press and PR officer at Newcastle said of the packs

“We want the packs to go to children who have long term conditions and will require regular attention by Radio Lollipop. We have chosen the items really carefully so that they have tangible benefits for the kids:

baseball caps are an excellent support for children who lose their hair during chemotherapy treatment;

play sheets and accompanying pen, pencil, rubber, coloured pencils and pencil case all help to ease the boredom of long hospital stays;

notebooks allow children to create a diary or just express themselves in any way they want to;

yo-yos encourage children to be active and move around rather than sitting in bed all of the time.

As you can tell we have used our experience of spending time with long-term patients to put together a pack that is fun, exciting but also have a real purpose to it.”

In addition to the items shown Radio Lollipop Newcastle will also be adding a 30cm ruler, a plastic mug, a stress ball and a foam square puzzle to the packs once production of these items is complete.

Kate Fenwick, fundraiser, said

“The team at Newcastle would like to thank Awards for All for their generous funding on behalf of all of the children who will benefit from the packs.

We hope to be able to raise the funds to sustain the packs once the first 1000 packs run out as we see a real value in them for the children on the ward.

We’re proud to be associated with such a great project”.