It’s hard to believe Radio Lollipop singing star Campbell MacKenzie was born with a life-threatening condition.<\/p>\n
The day-old baby boy couldn’t breathe or feed and was diagnosed with an internal organ abnormality.<\/p>\n
He needed urgent medical attention from the team at Starship children’s hospital to save his life.<\/p>\n
Today he is a healthy 14-year-old who regularly gives back to the hospital by singing live on Radio Lollipop to entertain the young patients.<\/p>\n
Cam has loved music for as long as he can remember.<\/p>\n
“I started playing guitar when I was 6 and I really did like listening to music, and it kind of kicked off,” he says.<\/p>\n
His first public performance was at a school variety show.<\/p>\n
Then, when he was 9 and wanting to raise funds for the Starship Foundation, he started busking on Auckland’s Vulcan Lane.<\/p>\n
He later sang at the 2009 Starship Supernova Swing fundraising concert alongside Op Shop frontman Jason Kerrison.<\/p>\n
He wanted to do more but was too young to be a volunteer on the wards so he contacted Radio Lollipop to see if he could sing for them.<\/p>\n
“I felt like I needed to give something back to the kids,” he says.<\/p>\n
Radio Lollipop chairwoman and volunteer Angela Mackie says Cam is an amazing person.<\/p>\n
“When he sings he draws people to him. We count him as one of our celebrity guests.”<\/p>\n
The effect his singing has on the children is amazing, she says.<\/p>\n
“I was once sitting with two girls on the ward and Cam was singing live on the radio.<\/p>\n
“When I told them who he was, their faces were shining when they found out he was just an ordinary boy like them,” Ms Mackie says.<\/p>\n
“They were gobsmacked.”<\/p>\n
Cam would like to continue his involvement as a volunteer with Radio Lollipop when he turns 18.<\/p>\n
“I’m not even a proper volunteer now but I still feel like I’m part of the Lollipop family. It’s a good family.”<\/p>\n
For the full story, see this Stuff.co.nz article<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s hard to believe Radio Lollipop singing star Campbell MacKenzie was born with a life-threatening condition. The day-old baby boy couldn’t breathe or feed and was diagnosed with an internal organ abnormality. He needed urgent medical attention from the team … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}