St Clair youngster Matilda Saunders raises $2200 with her violin
One little girl from St Clair has managed to raise more than $2000 for the Sydney Children’s Hospital using just a violin.
Penrith
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If you’ve been to the St Clair Shopping Centre in recent times, you may have seen a young girl playing her violin.
Her name is Matilda Saunder and the 10-year-old has raised more than $2000 for the Sydney Children’s Hospital this year through her busking.
Matilda, or Tilly as she is known to her family, said she got the idea to raise funds after her younger brother Caden, 7, had to spend time at the hospital after bowel surgery.
“Every year we go to Town Hall as a family to listen to the Christmas choir,” she said.
“When I was little, I saw people busking and I’d always ask mum if I could do it.
“She said I could, but that it should be to raise money for something else, not just myself.
“A couple of years ago my brother had to go to hospital for surgery on his bowel. I visited him after the surgery, and the hospital was really good with him.
“They had the Starlight Foundation, which is where they have games and other stuff for them to play with and entertain them in hospital.
“I started fundraising for them with my busking.”
This is Matilda’s third year fundraising, and it’s gotten bigger every year.
“My first year I raised $1600, and last year I did $1800,” she said.
“This year I’ve raised $2200, and that’s just me busking. We do fundraising online as well.”
Matilda’s mum, Megan Azzopardi, said she was proud of what her daughter had achieved.
“She works really hard at her music,” she said.
“I’m a music teacher, and people always say ‘that’s what you get when your mum’s a music teacher’, but I don’t get a lot of time to actually teach her.
“It’s really lovely what she’s doing, and the shops around here support her as well.
“A security guard helped find a better spot for her this year, and he made sure we had somewhere to sit while she was playing.
“She’s always telling me she can’t rest because there’s too many people, so she’ll play for two hours without a break.”
Ms Azzopardi said her son Caden was doing much better since his surgery.
“He’s got a cecostomy and he can’t go to the toilet,” she said.
“He gets medicine in every morning that clears his intestines out, then he’s right to go about his day.
“He couldn’t do too much of anything before he got it, whereas now he’s playing around and doing sports.
“You don’t realise how you’re living until you change it, and it’s so much better now.
“We’re lucky that we didn’t need to spend a long time in the hospital, and that we’ve been able to come home.”
Help light up the lives of sick kids this Christmas – lightupchristmas.org.au.