Getting Started
- Start by creating an account here.
- Add balloon(s) to your cart and pay with your debit or credit card. Your balloon purchase(s) will be confirmed to you by email. If you purchased a balloon offline, you will be sent a unique ‘Balloon Activation code’ by email, which you can enter to give you access to your balloon account.
- You're now ready to decorate and customise your balloon!
About Radio Lollipop
Radio Lollipop is an international children’s charity providing care, comfort, play and entertainment to sick children in hospital. The service was founded in the UK in 1979 as a one-off project with a vision to reach every child in hospital – anywhere, any time
Now after more than forty years as an entirely volunteer organisation Radio Lollipop has grown to include over 10,000 volunteers operating 26 hospital radio stations in 5 countries. We also operate satellite stations in a number of suburban/regional hospitals.
And since 1979 Radio Lollipop volunteers have directly helped nearly 5 million sick children in hospitals and reached over 13 million people worldwide.
Buy Balloons to help create flexible services
Your 3 GBP balloon will go towards helping Radio Lollipop reach every child in hospital through new and flexible opportunities. For example:
Modern hospital design is focusing on providing single-bed rooms. This further isolates children and underscores the growing and continued need for Radio Lollipop and our play volunteers to help sick children connect to the world outside their rooms.
Radio Lollipop Full service; an in-hospital radio station plus volunteers for ward visiting and one-to-one play with the children.
Radio Lollipop Lite; a limited broadcast capability plus volunteers for ward visiting and one-to-one play with the children. Radio Lollipop Local; A satellite broadcast service plus volunteers for ward visiting and one-to-one play with the children. New Stations; We currently have numerous requests from children’s hospitals around the globe to create new Radio Lollipop services in their hospitals. We can realise these requests with your help
Our Challenges and Issues
Once a Radio Lollipop station is established, it doesn’t take much money to keep it operating – they are very frugal, low maintenance volunteer operations. However, despite those limitations we have managed to steadily grow over the past 44 years.
We need volunteers, but we know each one has limited hours available. So a larger pool of volunteers is always welcome. If you are interested in learning to be a radio announcer, for example, we will train you. And if that’s not your cup of tea, we can teach you how to be a great play buddy to the kids in hospital instead.
Finally, as a volunteer based organisation we just don’t have the capacity to realise all our opportunities without the generous help and support of our communities and business organisations. We have limited extra fund-raising capacity to expand and any help is very welcome.