![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2010\/05\/Volunteers_Loula_Kostos_2551.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
It takes thousands of dedicated people, from nurses and doctors to clerical and support staff, to run The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH).<\/p>\nIt takes thousands of dedicated people, from nurses and doctors to clerical and support staff, to run The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH).<\/p>\n
But yesterday the unsung heroes – the RCH volunteers – were recognised for their contribution to the hospital at the 2010 Minister for Health Volunteer Awards.<\/p>\n
In a special presentation at Parliament House last night, Health Minister Daniel Andrews paid tribute to the many volunteers who make a tireless contribution to public healthcare each day.<\/p>\n
The RCH volunteers picked up two awards: Volunteer Loula Kostos was honoured for more than 45 years of service, and the RCH Splint Team was honoured for 20 years of service.<\/p>\n
Loula started volunteering at the RCH in 1964 working in the interpreter service helping countless families from non-English speaking backgrounds.<\/p>\n
She moved to another family support role in 1989 in the operating suite where she provides comfort to anxious parents as they wait for their child to emerge from surgery.<\/p>\n
Loula says she was shocked to win the award.<\/p>\n
“I went to the Awards not even dreaming I’d win anything, and what a wonderful experien![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2010\/05\/Volunteers_RCH_splint_team_2551.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
ce it was,” Loula said.<\/p>\n
Loula has contributed more than 8,500 volunteer hours and has committed about four hours every week.<\/p>\n
“Volunteering at The Royal Children’s Hospital has been a wonderful part of my life.\u00a0 I love all the people I meet.\u00a0 I always feel I get more out of it than I give,” she said.<\/p>\n
The Splint Team were just as astounded at the acknowledgement.<\/p>\n
Volunteer Phyl Brown said words couldn’t express her excitement.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t stop shaking until I arrived home.\u00a0 It was an honour to simply receive an invite considering the many worthy volunteers out there,” she said.<\/p>\n
Phyl, together with her splint-making teammates Dulcie Cedaro and Maria De Poi, have given 14,407 hours of voluntary service to the RCH.\u00a0 During this time they’ve helped make approximately 250,000 splints – an estimated saving of $800,000 for the hospital.<\/p>\n
“I love it.\u00a0 The volunteers are a good crowd, we’re very close to each other,” Dulcie said.<\/p>\n
“The award was quite overwhelming, as we don’t volunteer to be noticed.\u00a0 We also have friendships that will last the rest of our lives,” Maria said.<\/p>\n
To find out how you\u00a0might become an RCH volunteer, visit the\u00a0RCH Volunteer Service website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Top right: Loula Kostos receives her award for outstanding individual achievement from Health Minister Daniel Andrews.<\/em><\/p>\n Bottom right (left to right): Dulcie Cedaro, Phyl Brown and Maria De Poi accept the outstanding team award for their splint-making volunteer work.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It takes thousands of dedicated people, from nurses and doctors to clerical and support staff, to run The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH). But yesterday the unsung heroes – the RCH volunteers – were recognised for their contribution to the hospital at the 2010 Minister for Health Volunteer Awards. In a special presentation at Parliament House … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}