What a difference a year has made to Billericay resident Joanne Harris.

In spring 1998 Jo, a student at the Walter Boyce centre for learning disabilities in Brentwood, was desperately waiting for a kidney donor, needing dialysis every few hours.

Now the fun-loving 32-year-old has a new lease of life, with a new kidney, thanks to a local lady donor, her own home and a new job.

And last weekend she rounded off an incredible 12 months by completing her first Brentwood Fun Run, to raise money for a sports club as a thankyou to her devoted friends.

In last year's event fellow students and staff from the learning disabilities centre on Warley Hill ran to raise money for the Kidney Research Fund after Joanne was given a kidney transplant at Oldchurch Hospital.

She had suffered from renal failure for most of her life and had been waiting for a donor for about a year before she had the operation.

Centre manager Steve Pickles said: "Her quality of life was so poor, she could only come here for half a day as she had to go on the dialysis machine every few hours."

But now her life has been transformed. She joined the Essex Ravens, the sports group for disabled people, plays netball and goes swimming.

Then a few weeks ago she told Steve she was determined to run in the Fun Run: "Because my friends raised money for me last year, I thought I would raise money for the sports club," said Jo.

She ran the three-mile course, gathering more than £100 in sponsorship, along with about 35 people from the centre, who between them look set to have raised more than £500 for the sports group.

Her next target is taking part in the BT Athletics Eastern Region Championhip for the disabled on May 1.

This week saw another good result for Jo. She landed a job as an assistant at Creasebusters in Shenfield one day a week. Jo wanted to thank Eileen Shanahan, Jenny Murphy and Debbie Otley, who are day centre officers, for their support in the run.

Initiative seems part of every student at the centre. Off his own back and out of his own pocket Graham Skidmore set up the only drinks station on the Fun Run route, serving about 280 drinks.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.