Way back in May this year (it feels like an eon ago, doesn’t it?) we let you know of our new relationship with the magical children’s charity, the Starlight Foundation.

Westnet was fortunate enough to be in a position to deliver a wonderful gift to the Foundation this April – the Starlight Express Van.

The Starlight Express Van takes the magic of Captain Starlight on the road to hospitals in regional areas which have limited or no entertainment for children. Starlight’s unique team of Captain Starlight’s are trained professionals skilled in delivering ‘positive distraction’ entertainment to seriously or chronically ill children and young people. To these kids, Captain Starlight is a magical superhero who brings a massive ray of sunshine to their lives, helping them forget, even if just for a moment, their pain.

The Captain Starlight crew will regularly be updating us with their tales of trips around Western Australia delivering good times to the kids and in turn, we’ll be sharing those stories with you! Here’s one from a recent trip to Geraldton Regional Hospital.

We arrived at the hospital in the morning and were asked to attend to a little boy who was in the emergency ward. The nurse said that Brady had just come back from a procedure and it was causing him to be sick every 5 minutes. She also told us that Brady had been crying and  it would be difficult to cheer him up. As we entered his room, we saw a young boy, with puffy eyes, looking very uncomfortable. Brady looked up at us in our outlandish Captain uniforms and wondered who they were.

It didn’t take long for us to engage Brady in some quizzes and magic and when we presented him with a prize, a model aeroplane, he brightened up a lot and seemed to completely forget about his illness. We stayed with him for over an hour and every time he was sick he would say “oh wait a minute Captains” then join back in the games. He wasn’t even fazed. His mum called us over as we were leaving and thanked us for our time. She told us that she hadn’t seen Brady that happy in a very long time.

With Westnet’s support, Starlight is able to reach more sick kids like Brady at a time when they need it most. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to sharing more of the exciting travels of the Starlight Express Van very soon.

Posted by Marika Mazzucchelli

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under Westnet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.