Dora the Explorer is the star of her own show on Nick Jr. and we were lucky enough for her to make a very special visit to the Gold Coast Hospital on Tuesday this week! Helping to kick-off our 3rd birthday celebrations, Dora came down to see some of her littlest fans who were eagerly awaiting the TV star.

The children where enchanted with Dora as she gracefully played in the studio, we even got a one sided interview with Dora on the radio!

It was great to see the childrens’ eyes light up, with big beaming smiles and their attention captured as Dora moved around into the wards to see each and every sick child.

We would like to say a massive thank-you to Dora and to Dreamworld for letting Dora come in to play with the children at the Radio Lollipop studio.

Rumour has it that more visits from our friends at Dreamworld are on the cards, so watch out everyone and hope that Dora and her friends come back very soon!

A volunteer from Radio Lollipop in Newcastle has been the first person to donate online to a £1m fundraising appeal to support 8 charities who will be working with sick children at the new Great North Children’s Hospital.

The appeal has been set up to raise the profile of the work done by the charities and to develop one central channel for donations.

Helen Hudspith, who made the donation said

“I am happy to help kick off the appeal. As a volunteer at Radio Lollipop Newcastle I see how much every penny means to the children at the hospital on a daily basis. People might not realise that even pennies can make a difference. Hopefully lots of other people will join me in donating to the appeal, safe in the knowledge that all of the money raised will benefit children in our region”.

For more information on the appeal and how you can donate visit

www.gnchappeal.org.uk

or

www.justgiving.com/gnch/

Radio Lollipop Gold Coast were lucky enough to have a special guest visit last week, the hilarious ‘DJ Becks’, who is one half of the ‘Benchwarmers’ afternoon show on Gold Coast’s 90.9 Sea FM!

Becks arrived and soon had the whole hospital in turmoil with his crazy-silly antics and jokes. Having played all sorts of games with the children including Jenga and UpWords (which he lost at quiet badly…shhh), Becks decided to really split our sides by telling jokes and mentioning the ‘smelly noise word’ several times, making all the children giggle and howl with laughter.

Next he was very professionally interviewed by Lachlan McKay who gave Becks a proper grilling – at least he knows now what it’s like to be on the other end of the Mic!

With so much fun and ridiculous amounts of laughter, we couldn’t get the children out of the studio at the end of the night, and the nurses had to coax the children back to their beds with great difficulty!

Well done to ‘our man Becks’ who we hope will be a regular special guest at Radio Lollipop Gold Coast. We enjoyed having a radio professional come down and judging by the squealing and shrieking so did all the children! Come back soon Becks!

As part of their annual “success week” to celebrate the achievements of its students, a local school sent 6 of their pupils on a visit to Radio Lollipop Newcastle today.

Liam Jones, John Grieves, Tanya Allcroft, Jade Craig, Aimmii McKenzie and Jessica Errington from Longbenton Community College spent a day with the volunteers at the Newcastle studio planning and presenting a radio show and helping with competitions and prize giveaways.

Two days ago, the students had run a stall at their school fayre raising over £300 for the charity.

They were able to do this because their teacher, Miss Hudspith also happens to be a Radio Lollipop volunteer.

Liam said
“we really enjoyed the trip – it was better than I expected it to be. It made me realise how important Radio Lollipop is when you are stuck in hospital. I loved visiting the children, especially a boy called Lewis because he was really happy to see us”.

All of the students are looking forward to repeating the visit next year.

Helen Hudspith said of the visit
“I’d encourage all Lollipop stations to open their doors to children from local schools. It gives them the opportunity to see the work that we do and to realise that a hospital does not always need to be a scary place – it can be a place full of joy and fun and somewhere that special memories are made”.